Mane-iac: Shadow of Vengeance
by HeatseekerX51
Summary: In a mirror universe, the super-heroine Mane-iac is enjoying a peaceful winter season after defeating the Malice-Mares. But the emergence of a new vigilante, violent, merciless, and out for blood, draws her out. With the Manehattan mob families ready to turn the streets into a warzone, she must reign in this new rival. But will she fall victim to his path of rage?
1. Part 1: From the Shadows of Night

**This story is a spin-off of a special chapter of Tarbtano's "The Bridge", "Mirror Gigan Saves Christmas" story/121836/49/the-bridge-a-godzilla-mlp-crossover/christmas-special-2016-mirror-gigan-saves-christmas**

* * *

 **DOWNTOWN MARETROPOLIS**

 **3** **RD** **SHIFT**

The back door of the Carrean restaurant swung open, slamming against the brick wall with a loud bang. The worker, dressed in a stained white t-shirt, even morso stained apron over his black pants, and sporting a chef's skull cap yellowed by many long hours of absorbing the sweat produced from slaving over the griddle, reacted to the chill of the night air with a shiver.

With a grunt he heaved a trash bag into the medium sized dumpster stationed just beside the exit, where it sat atop another bag that had surpassed the rim of the container. Letting out a sigh, he rubbed the back of his neck to massage the ache that had developed, taking the precious moments out of the hectically sultry kitchen to breathe some fresh air and let his body cool off.

The tight alley into which the door opened, was much like any narrow passageway to be found in a major city. Bent and broken garbage barrels, the bottoms of fire escapes, the minute squealing of rodents, and the ever-present stank that came with being little more than the taint of a city block. Despite its unpleasant aesthetics, the staff frequently used it for quick getaways, like a chance to smoke, or have a word with someone not inclined to use front doors.

Like the guests tonight. The dining room had been rented out for a private function, to a fairly large group of men who dressed well and kept a keen eye on their surroundings. To the outside world, they presented themselves as a wealthy organization of business owners, managers, and local philanthropists. Amongst themselves however, the Ponezetti family were the dominant mob in this part of the city, controlling everything from what drugs could be sold on what corner, to which cops could be put on payroll. In the interest of discretion, minimal staff was on hand tonight.

Lighting his cigarette in the doorway, the line cook was just glad to be as far away from the men in dark silk suits as he could be. He didn't know what was being discussed at the tables, and he didn't wanna know.

Knowing that his boss would notice him gone, the man dropped his smoke on the pavement, and extinguished it with the toe of his shoe. As his vision rose to take the turn back inside, he found himself staring into the muzzle of a black handgun.

Standing behind the pistol, was another man wearing a ski mask that left only his eyes and mouth exposed. Dressed all in black, slacks and a long sleeve high-collar shirt, his steel blue eyes that of a predator. The cook froze, staring into the cavity of the barrel like taking his gaze off of it would kill him.

"Shhh." The man in the mask whispered, lifting the finger of his other gloved hand to his lips. "You don't make a sound, I don't splatter your brains all over the place, capisce?"

Being of Carrean descent, the cook didn't know what the word translated as, but he knew perfectly well what it meant. He nodded like his head was having an earthquake, bracing himself against the door frame as the man carefully stepped past him entering the back of the kitchen. In his wake, four more men, all wearing the same kind of mask, and each carrying an automatic rifle. The last one in grabbed him by the collar and forced him to walk inside.

The leader of the armed men came up to the corner of a stainless-steel refrigerator, deftly putting his back to it as a waitress entered the room. Instantly his hand was over her mouth and the gun pressed to her temple. He waited a few seconds for her initial shock to wear off, letting her muffled scream pass before he tapped the muzzle.

"You just stay quiet sweetheart, we're not here for you."

He turned back to his men, tossing his head in the direction of the double doors to the dining room. They proceeded through the kitchen, the last one shoving the cook under a prep table, putting him on his knees. Gripping the waitress by the back of her neck, the leader coerced her likewise, kneeling under the table next to her coworker.

"Keep an eye on 'em." With the final command, the leader left to join the others, leaving his man to guard the hostages.

Lining up like a SWAT team, the man in front peeked through the small round window, seeing the patrons in the next room. An older man stood among the rest who sat, a drink in his hand as he gestured along with his speech, pointing to several of his audience. The lead man glanced back to his boss, "He's here. They're all here."

"And so…" Pausing for dramatic effect, the patriarch looked over the members of his extended family assembled before him. Decked out in attire that befit his status, they grey hairs of his head and velvet red cummerbund signified that this man was to be listened to. "That is why the shorefront must be protected. If we lose that, then we lose-"

The doors to the kitchen burst open, the armed team marching through and covered the whole room in their field of fire before any of the attendees could pull any of their own guns out. The leader trained his Beretta 87 on the Patriarch, who glared back at him in disbelief.

"You had to know this was coming Antonio." As his men leveled their weapons on the crowd, the leader strode up to the outer rim of tables, careful not to get so close that someone could do something brave or foolish.

"You were told to keep your filthy drug peddlers out of the north end! When your guys started poppin' up where they don't belong, we let you handle it, as a gesture of good faith. But now it's not just that, now our guys start catchin' beatings and left for the cops to pick up."

"What the hell are you talking about!?" The older man barked, casting his glass to the floor where it shattered.

"We knew you were ambitious Antonio." The hammer of the Beretta clicked as it was cocked back. "But we didn't think you were stupid."

In the kitchen, the cook and waitress huddled together in trembling fright, the presence of the man behind them like that of a wolf about to pounce.

When the gunfire erupted from the dining room, they were both so startled, they banged their heads against the underside of the table. The woman clutched both hands to her mouth, stifling the cry that rose in her throat. She clenched her eyes shut, and they both bowed to the floor, terrified that killers like these weren't the kind to leave loose ends.

They were so overcome with fear, that they didn't even notice when the lights went out.

"Hey! What the hell happened!?" Calling out to his men, any of whom were still alive to hear him after the shootout, the leader tried to pierce the total darkness of the room for any sign of movement. The only point of reference, was the series of windows along the street-side wall, where a few silhouettes stood out. As much as he didn't want to mistakenly shoot any of his own crew, someone could get the drop on him and he'd never see it coming.

"I don't know!" One of them called out to his left, "Did an electric line get shot?"

Though momentarily stunned by the idiocy of such an idea, he was at a loss to think of a better answer.

"Did Johnny kill the power box? That wasn't part of the plan."

"It was part of mine."

This new voice he didn't know, it was throaty, and spoke with a snarl. Before he could consider what was said however, another fire fight broke out on the opposite side of the room, muzzle flashes illuminating the space for milliseconds at a time. Members of both sides shouted in pain and alarm, and not just trading fire with one another. There was someone else.

Against the backdrop of the windows, the hit team leader saw men with guns raises their weapons, only for a body to seize upon them, and very violently incapacitate them. It didn't seem to matter who it was, Ponezetti or otherwise, the crack of bullets gave way to the snap of bones and the screams of grown men.

Taken totally by shock, Jimmy "Flanks" watched wide-eyed as the rifle of one of his men was raised point blank to the figure's head, only for them to switch positions in the blink of an eye. An arm wrapped around his man's neck, and he heard the sound of punches being landed into the midsection, hard enough that something inside broke with every hit.

More flashes of gunfire, and the figure used his hapless opponent as a meat-shield, guiding him toward the source before launching him forward with such momentum, that both he and the firer were sent into the wall.

"WHAT THE HELL IS THIS JIMMY!?" His teammate latched onto his arm, and he could feel the tremors coursing through his body.

"WE NEED TO GET- _ACKkkk_!"

Jimmy could only gasp and recoil when a hand blacker than the shadows around it came around to palm his teammates face, and yank him back into the darkness. In a panic he fired blindly into the space where the attacker had taken him, too terror-stricken to contemplate if he had just shot his own man to death.

Then the sounds of fighting stopped, the restaurant suddenly plunged into silence. The only thing Jimmy could hear, was the beating of his heart and his own rapid breathing. It had all just happened so fast, retreat not even registered as an option. But now that his instincts to fight or flight had reconnected to his senses, he swallowed a lump of fear and bolted as best he could for where he remembered the entrance to the kitchen was.

He ran nose-first into the door, his momentum pushing him the rest of the way through. Eyes watering and his legs stumbling, the prep table seemed to appear out of nowhere and collide into his stomach, doubling him over.

"Jimmy is that you?" Left behind, he could hear the anxiousness in his man's voice. The luxury of not knowing what had just occurred in the next room saving him from mortal dread.

"There's somebody in there man!" Flanks went to push himself away from the table, but a hand gripped his ankle, and yanked his legs out from under him. The side of his face struck the steel surface, a spurt of blood splattering across. As he fell back in a heap against the wait staff counter, his vision came in and out of focus.

"Jimmy?" The final member of the hit team took a single step forward when he was struck in the chest, knocking the wind out of him and pressing him against the refrigerator. He tried to raise his rifle, but felt the handrail wrestled to the side, followed by a punch to his upper arm that broke the humerus in half.

"AAAAAHHHHH!"

The scream drew Jimmy's attention, and through the blur of his concussion, he watched the top-half of the refrigerator door open, and a muscular dark figure grab his man's head, shoving it into the opening. Over and over again, the door was brought to bear on his skull, causing the entire appliance to shudder violently with each impact.

When he was finally satisfied, his chest heaving from adrenaline, the figure let the man slump to the floor, leaving a crimson smear on the white frame.

"You two, under the table, get lost."

Still quivering in their hiding place, the cook and waitress were hesitant to move an inch, especially after what had just happened only a few feet behind them.

The dark figure whirled around, and delivered a kick to the steel table that nearly flipped it over as it skidded back.

"I SAID SCRAM!"

The pair clambered over one another in their haste to reach the back door, dashing into the street like a pack of wild dogs were on their heels.

It was just now, that Jimmy remembered the gun in his hand. As the figure watched the restaurant workers flee, he raised his pistol, aiming carefully despite his shaking for the head of the mystery attacker. He pressed the trigger, only to hear the hammer click.

In the same second it took Jimmy "Flanks" to realize that he was out of rounds, the figure whipped his head in his direction and vanished.

A hand possessed of such crushing power Jimmy had not thought possible for a human, seized him by the wrist, forcing him to drop the gun. The same hand pulled him to his feet, before retracting to slap him upside the cranium. He fell to the floor, and began crawling away, towards the open exit.

"Jimmy Flanks… I've been looking for you."

Glancing over his shoulder, Jimmy could just make out the man in the darkness, walking behind him as casually as a Sunday stroll.

"You know some people I wanna talk to."

"Get the hell away from me man!" On his elbows and knees, Jimmy was only a few feet away from the alley when a hand on the back of his beltline dragged him back.

"No!" His fingers tried to find purchase in the tiled floor, but found none. The sheer strength of his assailant hauled him up, a single arm securing both of his behind his back.

"What do you want from me?"

"I want you to scream Jimmy." The mouth just at the edge of his ear spat, a distinct tone of personal hatred. "I want to see the look in your eyes when you beg me for mercy."

Jimmy felt the muscles of the man who held him, reminding him of how pro wrestlers are built. He was turned to the side, a hand forcing his face down onto another surface, this one smelling of grease. The mask was yanked off, exposing his bare skin to the cool metal.

"You feel that Jimmy? This is the grill."

"NOOOOO!" He screamed, the terrible understanding dawning on him. "For the love of god don't do this! I'll tell you anything you wanna know!"

"I know you will."

A single, small click was heard. "You're about to feel the heat Jimmy, a little more intensely than how your guys in the north end felt it. I want the names of your bosses, where they live, who they cheat on their spouses with, what they drive."

The thought of betraying his _Familia_ offended him to his core, but with seeing everything this stranger had done, and the rising warmth against his cheek, the primal urge for self preservation cast out all notions of honor and omerta.

He talked, and the hotter the stovetop got, the faster and more frantically he talked. Names, addresses, hairstyles, favorite watering holes, every bit of information his mind could retrieve in spite of escalating panic. Finally when the hot sting on his skin reached a searing point, the hand pulled his face away.

"Your cooperation is much appreciated, but I'm afraid I can't just let you go."

"What are you gonna do? Who the hell are you?" His answers came in the form of his whole body being lifted off the ground.

"I am going to wipe out the criminal scum of this city, one block at a time. You go tell your bosses that. For that matter, go tell your enemies too, tell the whole damn underground, _**I**_ am coming for them."

Jimmy's body was shoved into the air intake vent that hung over the griddle, where he reflexively reached out for something to grab onto. His fingers and feet found the inside rim, where he braced himself.

"Hold on tight Jimmy. These griddles have a temperature range of 200° to 450° Fahrenheit. You could get some serious burns if you let go."

The hands fell away, leaving Jimmy to strain himself in the effort to not drop straight down, even now he could feel the heat rising off the grill. Grease that coated the surface caused his grip to slide downwards in steady motion. A bead of sweat trickled down the bridge of his nose, and dripped to where it was evaporated in a second upon touching the griddle.

"As for who I am…"

A light shone through the windows to the dining room, illuminating just enough of the stranger's face for Jimmy to catch a glimpse of one side. The man wore a dark grey mask that covered all but his ears, mouth, and chin, over his eyes was a pair of yellow-lensed goggles. Medium length hair draped down to the side, a shade of deep, dark blue.

Outside the street, two police patrol cars put their front wheels onto the curb, their headlights beaming through the windows to the inside. One officer who got out was stopped in his tracks by what he could see of the carnage. Shapes of men strewn across the floor, others looking like they had been in a car accident.

"Dear god…" He muttered, reaching for his radio.

The other three officers got as far as he did before human nature paused them in stride, none of them had ever seen anything like this in Maretropolis.

"Dispatch, this is unit 5-5 on site, we uh… we need medical, a lot of it."

A young female officer began to approach the front door, but froze when a loud crashing sound was followed by a blood-curdling scream.

 **NEXT MORNING**

The sun streamed in through the windows of a charmingly furnished living room, a woman in a fuzzy robe striding through as she stretched her arms.

Mica Hackett yawned, choosing to greet the day not with a jubilant optimism, but with the practical reflection she had gained from her night job. She scratched at the keloid scar on her throat as absentmindedly as if it weren't ever there. Being a Sunday, there was little need for any rushed effort to get around to corporate business, of which there never seemed to be any end of.

Plopping herself down onto the couch, her long, long, long tendrils of purple hair curling around the backrest, and settling around her to create a comfortable brace of cushion. It had been a few weeks since she'd been able to get Gigan out of her hair, figuratively as well as literally, and a quite weekend was welcomed.

Even though she had become somewhat used to his brand of humor, and his pervasive if not occasionally vulgar attempts at flirting with her, she needed some breathing room. He was interesting enough company, just not in so large a dosage. So they both figured that a vacation of his own following Iron Maredon on tour would be for the best.

A wisp of her locks coiled around the remote control as she spread her arms across the backrest, pointed it at the television above the fireplace, and pressed power. The screen blinked to life with the first thing she wanted to see in the morning, the local news. While the Mane-iac did all she could to protect the city, even she needed some periodic rest and relaxation. So it behooved her to stay abreast of local happenings, just in case something popped-off while she was in the office or slouching around in her jammies.

"-Wake of the capture of the Malice Mares…" The news of Mane-iac and her "bizarre unknown ally" defeating the alliance of super-powered villains had hardly been out of the mouths of newscasters since it happened. So it's mention being the first thing she heard today didn't surprise her. What did pique her interest however, was the side graphic next to the anchor, showing a picture of a well-known Carrean restaurant downtown.

"What in the world?…" Mica leaned forward in her seat, turning up the volume and focusing on the collage of crime scene footage that played.

"…ing to police investigators, the gunfire was the result of an inter-mob conflict, between the Ponezetti family, and the notorious Flankastro. There is however, reports from witnesses that there was another actor in the fray last night, a third party who laid waste to members of both sides."

"Gigan…." Was her first thought, spoken aloud as if she were able to warn him off doing something stupid. "That better not be you."

"Those same reports do confirm that it was not the chainsaw-wielding, foul-mouthed maverick that aided the Mane-iac in her victory against the Malice Mares. This photo of him on tour with Iron Maredon last night is confirmed to be authentic."

Very quickly, an image appeared on screen, showing Gigan falling out of a tour bus, sliding down the steps on a cascade of empty alcohol cans and liquor bottles. Gesturing to the camera with a big smile and a thumbs-up.

"Whew." Mica sighed. "Good for that, but now who do I have to worry about running around on the streets beating the hell out of criminals?"

Next on screen, was footage of the inside of the dining room, and the kitchen, along with pictures of the injured. Mica put a hand over her mouth, aghast by the brutality and violence meted out by what her combat experience could tell her, was done with bare hands.

"… Flankastro family member, Jimmy "Flanks" was the only one to provide police with a description of the mystery assailant."

The mention of the name drew here attention, and the picture of him drew her to her feet.

"…As seen here, Jimmy suffered 1st & 2nd degree burns to his face, hands, and arms after falling onto a heated griddle, after being beaten and tortured…"

She didn't know who could be responsible for this, but this kind of savagery was going too far, even for known criminals. Even Masked Matter-Horn was more civilized than this. Whoever this person was, they had to be stopped. She glared at the television screen, anger and determination flaring inside her.

"…When asked who had done all this, Jimmy told police that his attacker had actually revealed his name…"

Mica took a step towards the screen.

"…Shadowbolt."


	2. Part 2: A Hero Emerges

**SUNDAY NIGHT, 0100 hrs.**

" _They say there's no rest for the wicked. I never quite understood how to interpret that phrase. Does it mean that evil never sleeps, and that we should be on constant guard against it? Or does it mean that the wicked are the ones who have to be on their toes all the time? Is their nature such that constant pressure to evade justice and retribution requires a leaner and crueler type of existence? Perhaps it means both, that the nefarious and the virtuous are in a perpetual game of chess to get the upper hand on the other_."

The Black Beauty sped through the streets of Maretropolis, the gleam of the streetlights reflecting off the lustrous sable exterior. A man lurking in the dark doorway of an apartment building couldn't help but watch it pass him by, the engine roaring into the night.

" _In any case I suppose, it meant that I would be having a lot of long nights until I caught Shadowbolt_."

Mane-iac, one hand on the wheel, the other on the stick-shift, felt the warmth soak through her leather seats and into her body. Of all the modifications she had installed in the vehicle, something like heated seats seemed like a small enough luxury. Especially for the CEO of a multi-million dollar corporation. This year's winter had brought with it a number of bitter cold nights, such that the Black Beauty's heating system was doing all it could to ward off the chill at the moment.

" _Usually I'm glad for such cold nights, as it means that most of the criminal element will decide to keep themselves warm rather than make trouble. Tonight however, I was hoping I could trawl the local street denizens for information. If Shadowbolt was as active as my police contacts told me, then somebody must know something_."

 **EARLIER, 2145 hrs.**

Donning a puffy grey winter coat as he exited the roof exit of the 46th Maretropolis police precinct, the blonde man in his mid-thirties let the cigarette dangle in his mouth as he patted his pockets. A puff of frozen breath came out on either side of his Maverick.

"The hell is my lighter?"

The spark of flame appeared in the darkness to his left, drawing his attention with a gasp.

"Need a light?"

The boxy metal lighter was suspended by a tendril of purple hair, beyond that, leaning cross-armed against the side of a utility box was a trim figure under a wide hat. Though hidden by the shadows, he knew who it was.

"Oh. Hey you." Caught in his beige slacks, old white dress shirt, and red tie, Detective Stephen Langoud usually liked to be a little more presentable for female company, but there were certain exceptions. Tilting forward, he lit his smoke on the offered fire.

"What's a matter?" He asked, the words slightly mumbled through the careful clench of his lips. "You so bored for work you come slumming to me for tips?"

"Yes and no." Sparing him a slight smile as she stepped forward, Mane-iac recovered the lighter into its place on her utility belt.

" _Detective Langoud is a nice enough guy, competent at his job, and doesn't mind sharing a few details. The fact that he finds me attractive is… tolerable, in that it helps when I need to get some information from time to time. His favorite place to step out for a smoke just so happened to be on the lonely roof of the precinct. Away from prying eyes."_

"Normally a quiet night like this means I get to go to bed." She tucked her scarf a little closer around her neck with both hands, never minding his leer. "But I guess somebody is trying to put me out of a job."

"That Shadowbolt guy, yeah." Langoud removed his smoke, holding it at his side as he checked over his shoulder to make sure they were alone. "He's been making a lot of people's lives hard the past two weeks."

"Anything you can tell me about him? Like, why I haven't heard about him before?"

His hands spread out at his sides as he shrugged. "Not a whole hell of a lot. Guy's like a friggin' poltergeist; mauls his target, gets 'em to talk, then vanishes like a puff of smoke. I never seen anything like it. For a while we weren't sure he was even a real guy, some underworld boogieman mobsters scare their kids with at night."

" _I suspected as much. Everything I'd been able to learn about the assault on the restaurant last night told me he was a creature of precision violence. Dismantling a dozen armed men in the middle of a fire fight, putting the fear of god into Jimmy Flankastro and those two staff workers. He went in there knowing exactly what he wanted_."

"Targets? You think last night was part of a larger pattern?" Mane-iac shifted weight onto her right leg, dipping her head to hide her eyes behind the hat's brim. The wind howling across the skyline.

"As best we can piece together, he's been putting the hurt on the north end for weeks. Mostly Flankastro, but targets of opportunity as well, the odd mugger and street dealer."

"So he's moving through the ranks." " _He's looking for someone, but why? For information? For revenge? And why the others? If he's got some vendetta with the mob, why waste time with perps any beat cop could collar? And why haven't I picked up on this?"_

Langoud nodded, "I'm not on the case myself, but everybody downstairs is talking about it." He took a drag and turned his face away from the wind. "He's doing a better job cleaning up the north end than the Drug and Organized Crime units have in the past ten years. You sure you masks ain't starting a club or something?"

She winced, "Even if I agreed with his aims, his methods go too far. If I catch up to him, he's going down."

"Yeah you better hope so, doll." After another long drag, he stared down at the tiny orange ring of burning carcinogens. "Captain says this vigilante stuff is getting out'a hand. We're grateful for your help with the Malice Mares, don't get me wrong. But a duly trained and appointed officer of the law, you are not. This guy keeps up, the order is gonna come down to put the kai-bosh to your extralegal activities."

" _Damn. That was a point I hadn't considered. Shadowbolt's path of rage was going to generate a lot of heat on both sides of the law_. _Maybe I've gotten too used to acting with a free hand._ "

"Have your colleagues been able to piece anything together? Any kind of profile?"

"Besides Jimmy Flanks and the two he stuck under the table, two other civilians got a glance at him, just barely. We think he's about 6'2, built like a gym nut, wears a full body suit from his toes to his eyes. Always strikes from the shadows, favors the ambush for a quick take down."

The flapping brim of her hat disguised a small grimace, mental gears turning to put together a plan.

" _I'll have to anticipate his movements. If he's as deft in the darkness as he sounds, my best chance will be to sight him at a distance, and hope to close the gap as quick as I can._ "

"You think he's still hunting in the north end?"

Flicking his Maverick away, Detective Langoud flexed his fingers to ward off the chill before shoving it into a jacket pocket. "If he's still aiming for the Flankastro, that'll be where he is."

"Thanks for the talk Steve." Mane-iac said, casting her gaze northerly. "Even if you do end up coming for me one day, it's good to know I've got at least one friend on the inside"

"Hey you know me." Langoud opened the roof access door, sparing a look down the stairs. "Always happy to help a pretty-"

Scanning the rest of the rooftop, he realized that he was alone.

"…Damn fool like me."

 **0110 hrs.**

Drifting to a stop in a discreet alley, the Black Beauty went dark. Mane-iac leaned back in the seat, listening to the police scanner for a few moments.

A minute later she was perched on the ledge of a 7-story apartment building, in the heart of Maretropolis' north end, the urban vista spread out before her.

" _And now we play the waiting game_."

 **MONDAY NIGHT**

 **2349 hrs.**

On another building, on another block, Mane-iac watched carefully for any sign of trouble on the streets, the chatter of the police scanner squawking through the embedded ear-piece.

" _Ok… So he took last night off._ " She rubbed her gloved hands together, blowing a hot breath between them. " _No problem."_

 **TUESDAY NIGHT**

 **2135 hrs**

" _God, this winter's only getting colder the longer it goes on. I'm not spending another night waiting around for him_."

Like an acrobat on a tight-rope, Mane-iac stepped toe-to-heel along the ledge of a hotel roof. With another stride as casual as if she were on a beach, her next footfall swung downwards into the open space and she tilted over the side of the building. Head-long she plummeted to the asphalt, until her hair formed a cone which absorbed the momentum when she reached the ground. It compressed like a spring, and bounced her onto her feet in seamless motion that allowed her to pick-up her pace as if nothing had happened.

" _Let's go shake some trees."_

A disheveled man, 30 lbs overweight, four-day old stubble clinging to his face, and shuddering inside an old beige trench coat, gave a passing car a suspicious glance as he walked briskly along the avenue. He brushed back a bang of his greasy looking brown hair under the black watch cap clutched to his head. Some instinct of self-preservation tickled its way up his spine, a fear of every shadowed corner and crevice making his heart beat just a little faster

With a grunt he faced forward and continued on his way, a redoubled sense of urgency. Turning onto the block a few dozen yards ahead of him, he spied a single individual, obscured at a distance by a broken street light. The man in the cap stopped in his tracks, eyes twitching as he appraised the approaching situation, the tingling in his spine becoming claws. Before the figure could get any closer, he ducked into a side street, pressing his body to the bricks.

For almost a minute he kept himself there, breathing through his teeth and clenched lips to keep as quiet as possible. His fingers closed into a fist in preparation for a fight, knuckles scraping against the porous mortar. The stranger walked by the opening of the alley without pause, the faint sound of music drifting out from underneath his raised hood. When the man had gone, he let out an exhale in the shape of a cloud of vapor, and ran a hand over his face, feeling the sweat of his palm wipe off.

He took a step out, but found that his rear foot was pinned in place.

"Wha-"

Faster than he could finish the word, he was yanked off his feet and dragged back into the darkness of the alley. Suspended upside-down by something he couldn't see, his first impulse was to shriek like a banshee, thinking he was about to be subject to a terrible beating. The scream was quarantined but a rope of purple hair that wrapped around his mouth, he pried at it, the strength of the fibrous band like that of a python.

"Don't wake the neighborhood Eddie, it's impolite."

Striding out of the back of the alley, Mane-iac had to put a hand over her mouth to hide her barely constrained laughter, the sight of the supposed tough guy squirming like a child threatening to break her composure. He calmed down visibly once he saw who it was who held him, a tendril of her famous hair arching upwards from her head to dangle him like a figure on a child's mobile.

"Eddie Kauffmann." She purred. "Flankastro errand boy, and one of the few guys savvy to names and locations that Shadowbolt hasn't gotten his hands on yet."

She peeled enough strands away from his for him to suck in a few desperate gasps of air.

"Mane-iac! You ain't working with that psycho are ya?"

"If I were working with him, do you think I'd just be dangling you around like this?"

To emphasize her point, she wiggled him like a dinner bell, much to his discomfort. "Matter of fact, I'm looking for him."

He splayed his arms in a mock show of candidness. "Well I don't know where he is, honest. I'm just trying to keep myself outta trouble."

"I know you don't know where he is Eddie." Rubbing the space between her eyebrows, she had to sigh. "But you do know the people he's after. So if I were an important Flankastro goombah, where would you find me?"

"Come on lady!" He complained. "I can't give up my contacts!"

"Here's the deal Eddie." Mane-iac let him drop a few feet to elicit a yelp of panic before jerking him back up. "Either you tell me, so that I can prevent him from filling the emergency ward with any more of your associates. Or you can wait until Shadowbolt finds you, and when you talk, because we both know you will, he'll break your legs anyway."

Drawing him close enough for her to reach out and grab a fistful of his hair, she let her displeasure be seen in a toothy snarl. "Putting aside the fact that I'm having to do the mob a favor by protecting them from punishment they probably deserve, if you make me wring this information out of you, I'm gonna get really mad. And if you're scared of what Shadowbolt is going to do to you, I get a little unhinged when I'm angry, and let me assure you, I can get very creative when I'm unhinged."

A tendril of hair poised in front of Kauffmann's face like a cobra, the individual strands spiraling apart in smaller groups to create dozens of thinner, sharper spikes. Eddie's eyes widened in terror, watching them waver in different directions. One writhed closer and closer towards his ear until they tickled the inner lobes.

"Alright! Alright!"

 **WEDNESDAY MORNING**

 **0527 hrs**

" _What Kauffmann lacked in courage, he made up for in intel."_

Entering her mansion via the hidden entrance behind the large mirror, Mica Hackett removed her hat and scarf, tucking them both under her arm as she detached the base of her mask and peeled it off. The morning sky was still dark, but the demands of her day job required a few hours rest after a long night out.

" _Eddie explained that after the massacre at the restaurant, the families had decided to close ranks and suspend normal operations. Until Shadowbolt could be dealt with, none of them wanted to hurt their organization by being tortured into giving up information. I was lucky to find Kauffmann when I did._

 _I was just disappointed that after three nights, I hadn't caught a single damn lead on Shadowbolt. Fortunately, there was going to be a meeting of family heads Saturday night to sort out some course of action. I intended to eavesdrop, make sure they didn't plan to turn the streets of Maretropolis into a warzone. Plus, it would be a magnet for tall, dark, and violent. When hunting a predator, find his prey._

 _I like to slip back in before my butler and long-time friend Charles woke up. No reason to get him up early for no good reason, I'll be in bed soon enough."_

The secret entrance was located in her bedroom, providing not just an extra layer of security, but the convenience of being not ten steps to her bed where she sometimes collapsed. Pressing her hand against a panel that was blended into the wall beside her closet, a compartment opened, revealing a place for her to stow her costume. Hooks for her hat and scarf, a hanger for her suit, even a molded set of imprints for her boots where puddled a layer of liquid solution that dissolved any material that may have clung to the tread. On a shelf at the top, she tossed her utility belt and earpiece.

She was just starting to slip off the body suit when she heard the spark of chatter from the earpiece. Curious, she grabbed it and held it up to listen.

" _I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Sometime during the night, a Ponezetti captain and three of his men had been leaving a club when their vehicle was attacked, t-boned and flipped on its side. No sign of a second vehicle. The doors had been ripped off, the men dragged out and beaten to a pulp._

 _Police on site were reporting that the bodyguards, or friends, or whatever they were had been brutally incapacitated and stuffed in a dumpster. The captain, apparently the main target, had his face repeatedly smashed into the windshield, leaving bits and pieces of his flesh embedded in the glass. He had attempted to pull a gun on his assailant, only to have his hand crushed._

 _All were unconscious, and in ghastly condition. There was no evidence of it being a hit from a rival family, no evidence at all pointing to who had been responsible. Worst of all, the police were estimating that the attack occurred two hours ago. While I was still on patrol._

 _Shadowbolt had struck again with impunity, and I hadn't even known about it."_

 **WEDNESDAY NIGHT**

 **0023 hrs.**

" _So he must have been watching, waiting to catch one of them. A panther crouched in the bush."_

The engine of the Black Beauty roared, barreling through the downtown intersection. Mane-iac gripped the steering wheel with both hands, her knuckles white under the gloves, her face pursed in resolve.

" _Shadowbolt's attack on the Ponezetti captain had taken place in the south end, altering his M.O. Now it wasn't just the north end, it was the whole city I had to worry about. And if any criminal on the streets of Maretropolis was a potential victim, then finding him before Saturday would be pure luck."_

The body crashed into the hood of the car with a sudden impact that nearly caused Mane-iac to jump back in her seat. She slammed on the breaks and screeched to a sideways halt, the momentum carrying the body forward and flopping across the pavement.

Staring wide-eyed and mouth agape through the windshield, it took her a few seconds to process exactly what had just happened. When her brain finally snapped back into the present moment, she tilted her head down to peer up through the windshield, up to where the man must have fallen from.

" _There he was, it had to be him. A black silhouette against the sky, standing at the edge of the building, staring right back down at me. I suppose it was a little like seeing a mythological creature for the first time; the image of him, strong and silent froze in my mind's eye."_

"Shadowbolt." A lash of her hair struck out and yanked the lever that sprung her ejector seat. The same mechanism triggered the roof, blowing it out of the way just in time for her to rocket upwards. A flag pole sticking out under a fourth floor window provided the means for her to sling-shot the rest of the way to the top.

leaping over the ledge and coming down ready for a fight, Mane-iac scanned the tops of the block for him, but found nothing. No tiny bit of surprise came to her.

"What? Where did he go?"

" _How fast was this guy? I'd expect a disappearing act like this out of Filliesecond, but it hadn't been two heartbeats since I saw him."_

With no trace of Shadowbolt, not even a sound, she became wary that he could be lurking somewhere close by. A paranoia born of the night that transformed her into the super powered woman she was now, throbbed into the forefront of her mind. Her lips curled back to expose her teeth, senses heightened by the perception of an unseen danger that was about to pounce.

"Ooooohhhh…"

The pained groan from down on the street was the only thing to trip her suspicion.

" _The body!"_ She realized.

Acting like shock absorbers, her hair took the brunt of the force as Mane-iac hit the street and rushed over to where the body of the man still lay in an ugly crumple, his breathing ragged, and a crimson pool growing under his head. He wore a long black winter coat over a bloodied white dress shirt and grey pants, a tangle of unkempt black hair was soaked through. Despite his crashing into the car, she could tell most of his injuries had been caused before he went off the roof, broken orbital sockets, teeth that looked like a Tetris game, and a dislocated shoulder.

" _I can only imagine what injuries I'm not seeing at first glance. I've got to get him to a hospital."_

Her hair enwrapped his shattered form, careful not to let his neck be unsupported, and lifted him off the ground, another tendril opening Black Beauty's back door behind the driver's seat. As she moved him something fell out from inside his coat, a yellow packet, the edges of several photographs peeking out. When he was laid securely across the backseat, Mane-iac bent down to retrieve the pictures, and she held them for a moment, deciding whether or not to take a look at them.

Glancing back to the man, curiosity got the better of her.

" _Just a quick look."_ Was her internal compromise. " _At first I was confused, they were just random pictures of people. But as I flipped through, I realized these were candid pictures taken without the subjects knowledge. They were shots of all kinds of people, of all ages, men, women, children; pictures of them in their homes, in their bedrooms and bathrooms."_

Her hands trembling, Mane-iac let the collection drop to the ground. This hadn't been some mob crony Shadowbolt wanted information from, this was a sick pervert that'd been caught in the act. She looked over to where he lay, with much less pity than before.

" _If he really had been caught in the act…"_

Hair tendrils slithered their way into his jacket pockets, one of them coming out with a digital camera. She pressed the power button, hoping the hard-drive hadn't been too damaged in the fall. Apparently the man had bought a quality device, and the display turned on without a hitch. There was another button to access the stored pictures, and pressing it, found what she wanted.

The last picture the man took, was Shadowbolt's face. Staring past the camera, he had been reaching out when the shot was taken, his mouth open in a roar of anger.

 **THURSDAY NIGHT**

 **0157 hrs.**

" _I would have wanted to get a copy of the picture for myself, but I just didn't have the time. After getting the creep to the hospital, I made an anonymous tip to a certain police detective about where they might find a peeping Tom. I had to put the package of pictures and camera back in his jacket, else there'd be no evidence of his crimes. But nonetheless, the picture of Shadowbolt stayed with my mind."_

Running across the rooftops of downtown Maretropolis, Mane-iac leaped the gap between apartment buildings.

" _It occurred to me that his mask was a lot like mine, at least with the open mouth. He wore goggles over his eyes, whereas I had the one-way opaque mesh. Are the goggles teched-out to see in the dark? Is that how he moves in the shadows so efficiently?_

 _What skin did show around the mouth, was a dull grey, and the dark blue hair coming down matched the description from the Saturday night attack."_

Nose-diving off of a fifth-story, she somersaulted in the air to plant both her feet on the brick side of the adjacent building, and push off.

" _I admit I was curious to find out who was under the mask. An odd thought, considering I had passed on uncovering Masked Matter-Horn after all she had done to me. I wonder how she might feel if she knew I was more interested in unmasking somebody else. Would she be jealous? The thought amused me."_

Hair tentacles lashed around a streetlamp, swinging her over a pair of cars on the road, and landing her just in front of a subway entrance. She hastily made her way down the steps.

" _During the day, I had taken the time to mark out every known location of a Shadowbolt incident on a map of the city. His sudden appearance in the south of the had thrown me off at first, until I realized that all his attacks were occurring close to subway stops. It took a few hours of staring at the chart to discern the pattern, but it was there. At least, that's what I convinced myself of."_

The station was deserted, with nothing but the dark tunnels on either side. She had ventured into several other stations since sundown, looking for any clue that he might be using it as passageway.

" _Trying to track him had been more frustrating than a bad hair day, which for me can literally be destructive. After dealing with the voyeur I went back to the rooftop, but just like his other scenes, he left no forensics at all. If I could get just a stray hair or footprint, something to give me a lead then I wouldn't have to waste hours scouring…"_

Approaching the edge of the platform she paused, spotting something out of place up by the left end. She went over and knelt down beside it, a splotch of blood, still wet. Reaching into one of the compartments on her belt, she took out a sterile pad and dabbed the blood with it, before putting it in a small Ziploc bag, and tucking it away in another pouch.

" _If this wasn't him, then somebody was bleeding. Worth checking out._ "

Mane-iac hopped down onto the tracks, conscious of the third-rail in the middle. Extracting a small but powerful rectangular flashlight from her belt, she shone it on the ground in a sweeping motion.

Another drop of blood, a few feet ahead on the rail.

She followed the trail for another hundred yards into the tunnel, where she came across a utility access door that had been forced open.

" _By the look of how the lock and handle mechanism are contorted, someone used raw power to push it open. Wonder who that could have been."_

Pushing the door open with a length of hair, she illuminated as much of the small room beyond as she could before taking any steps forward. There wasn't much inside, just an electrical junction box, a small desk and swivel chair, and a book-sized cardboard box.

" _With a spot of blood on it…"_

Crouching down to examine the box on the desk without touching it, she noted the sticker logo on one of the open flaps.

" _Property of Cornet Labs. Hmm.."_

She might have investigated the room a bit more, but at the sound of scuffling shoes coming down the tunnel she turned and shut her light off.

"The boss said we should check down here." Two bulky men in heavy jackets stalked along the tracks, each of them with a flashlight. "He said Shadowbolt could be hiding out in one of these tunnels."

"Here!" The other one called out, pointing his beam to the room. "The door's busted open."

Squeezing through a doorway barley wide enough to accommodate them, the men crammed into the small room with as much grace as water buffalo. The first one picked-up the box and looked it over.

"He was here alright."

" _The boss huh?"_ Suspending herself against the ceiling above the doorway by pressing her hair to the walls, Mane-iac watched them search the rest of the room.

" _Just don't look up here, and I can follow you guys back to whoever sent you. They make it sound like their boss might know something about Shadowbolt I don't."_

"Come on, there ain't nothing else in here." Standing directly under her, the second man had his back to the entrance, scratching his neck as he spoke. "I don't wanna be around when he gets back."

"Too late."

" _He's here!"_

A pair of hands seized the man by his shoulders and pulled him out of the room faster than he could finish screaming. The first man whipped around to cast his light on the door, the beam shaking.

"You're gonna need more than a flashlight, big guy." The female voice drew his attention upwards, where his light revealed Mane-iac propped against the ceiling.

"YOU TOO!" He cried, dropping his flashlight.

She dropped down between him and the doorway, her hair grabbing the table and jamming it in the entrance. The goon backed-up against the wall, where she took fistfuls of his shirt.

"Tell me who your boss is and I'll get you out of here!"

The stunned hesitation in his answer would cost them both, as the table was battered aside. They both turned to see the dark figure in the doorway, a tiny amount of reflected light gleaming off his goggles.

"This doesn't concern you Mane-iac, this isn't your fight."

"When you start torturing people and throwing them off roofs, I make it my concern." Mane-iac brought her hands up in a defensive posture, hoping the man behind her didn't do something stupid. "I think you and me should have a talk."

"I think the time for talking is over."

" _Man he was fast. Not as fast as Filliesecond, but still, when he rushed at me, it was like in one of those dreams when you try to run, only to feel like you're in trapped in tar."_

Before she could stop him, Shadowbolt was in her face. He gripped her by the sides and heaved her to the ceiling, her hair reflexively closing in to protect her. Reaching through the strands and taking hold of the terrified

guy she had been shielding, he made to dash out of the room quickly.

But Mane-iac was not going to be stalled by shock again this night. Shadowbolt had already turned away when a vine of purple hair coiled around his neck, his momentum causing his legs to go flying out from under him.

"It wasn't a suggestion!"

Shadowbolt turned with a snarl and a flash of anger in his lenses, seizing the stretch of hair with both hands.

" _He can't seriously think he's-"_

The concrete frame of the doorway was blown apart in a cloud of debris and dust as the two tumbled onto the train tracks. Mane-iac rolled across the ground, her face stopping just inches away from the third rail. Coming eye-to-eye with peril again, a memory flashed in her mind of the moment she gazed up at the ceiling before the warmth of the chemical vat enveloped her. A small gasp escaped, briefly coating the metal with a spot of vapor.

Pushing himself off the crushed stone, Shadowbolt saw that Mane-iac was still not on her feet, and took the opportunity to sprint down the rest of the tunnel.

"HEY!" She scrambled to chase after him, pausing for a quick second to see the two goons beat a hasty escape back in the direction of the station.

"Eh, you lousy bastich!"

" _Ugh, Gigan was really starting to rub off on me."_

Pursuing him further into the tunnel, she might have lost him totally if she hadn't felt a slight draft on her lips coming from the left. She stopped and turned to see a metal exit door swinging open.

" _Access hatches, built in case people were trapped in a collapsed tunnel, they could only be opened from below. One door in the tunnel, up a set of stairs, and out another door to the surface._ "

The outside door was still open when Mane-iac rushed through it. The exit was located in a small lot adjacent to Baltimare Avenue, for the ease of any emergency vehicle that might have to respond. Her own superior sight in the darkness a gift of her double iris, she spotted a figure leap onto a parked tractor-trailer and from there onto the roof of a diner.

" _I not losing you again!"_

And so the chase was on. The combined efforts of her own enhanced physicality and the grappling power of her prehensile locks allowing her to gain on him as they ran like hunter and quarry through the city. Though it was not entirely her own effort; every so often Shadowbolt would look back to gauge her, giving up precious bits of distance each time.

" _Good thing I run every evening! The way this guy moves it's like he never gets winded."_

Mane-iac had closed the gap to within 30 yards of him on the top level of a parking garage when he went off the side and out of her view. Throwing her legs into a dead sprint, she launched herself off in kind.

Perched on a ledge on the side of the building, Shadowbolt waited until she passed before he reached out and grabbed the ends of her hair and brought her to a flailing bungee cord stop.

"AHH!" " _What?!" "-_ GAK _!"_ She cried out internally and externally, feeling her neck and legs demand to keep the momentum going.

With an audible exertion, he pulled upwards on her hair, and when she came back up to his level, he propelled himself directly into her. Driving his shoulder into her midsection, he speared her through the window of the adjacent office building, crashing them both in a shower of glass into the wall of a cubicle.

Mane-iac's retaliation was swift, and before Shadowbolt could break contact, her purple tendrils wrapped around his shins. Up she sent him, through the ceiling tiles, back down into a row of cubicles, and right through every one between back to her. She jumped off the floor when he came sailing back, unlashing her hair to grapple him with a judo hip toss that broke the desk he landed on in half.

Chests heaving for breath and teeth bared, Mane-iac and Shadowbolt got their bearings as he rose to his feet.

"Now about that talk." She grunted, legs poised and fists raised. She could see him much clearer now, the ambient light pollution of the city illuminating enough of him to make out his whole body. He wore a skin-tight body suit, dark lavender with charcoal extremities, separated by bolts of yellow that ringed each limb. Another jagged ring came down from either shoulder to meet at a 'V' on his chest.

"Shadowbolt."

"I said this doesn't concern you!" He barked, standing opposite her, fists to his sides. "This is a personal vendetta. I'm not out to rob or hurt anyone who doesn't deserve it. There's plenty of criminals in Maretropolis for the both of us."

"Let's just say I take issue with your methods." Realizing however that he was currently choosing to talk, she kept her guard up, knowing how fast he could be in close quarters. "Smack 'em around some, sure, even perverts like that guy you dented my hood with. But you nearly killed him, you go too far."

"Too far?" Scowling, he glared at her. "If you knew what the men I get my hands on do to innocent people, you'd know it's not far enough. My sins are a drop in the bucket compared theirs. I would think you'd understand that. Unless the real reason you have a problem with me, is you just don't want any competition in the vigilante market."

"Believe me, I'd love to have a few nights a week off, but you stacking up bodies in the emergency ward doesn't help me, this city, or the justice system."

"Justice system!" He spat, anger spiking. "You want to help this city, Mane-iac? I'll tell you want doesn't help; those Ponezetti and Flankastro running the streets like their own personal fiefdoms, pushing their poisons, extortion rackets, corrupting the justice system at every level."

Taking a measured step closer, Shadowbolt tapped a finger to his chest. "I live down there, in the dark and hidden places, I see this city from the bottom up. I see drugs sold to children, cops being bought, judges and politicians getting in the back seat with mobsters. Thanks and all for locking up the Malice Mares, but other than that, I can't see what the hell you've been doing for this city."

The accusation stung, and for a moment, she considered that perhaps she had spent too many days in expensive comfort. In any case, this track wasn't going make things any better.

"There are problems with the system, everybody knows that, but the alternative, street justice doled out without due process, is worse. Now, you said this was personal, maybe there's something I could help you with. You know, so you don't have to go around kickin' everybody's ass."

"That's where you're wrong Mane-iac." Shadowbolt gave her a savage grin, lowering his posture. "Kicking their ass is the best part."

He charged at her, striking out with one fist after another. But unlike in the subway office she was ready for him, blocking and countering in a flurry of movement. He was fast, he was strong, but her superior training and technique allowed her to deftly outmaneuver the furious assault. A right cross countered into a back-fist, blocked into an arm bar attempt, rolled through into a knee thrust. Shadowbolt stumbled back a step, giving Mane-iac the opening for a snapping back spin-kick to his stomach.

He was knocked against a copy machine, and as he reeled, she followed through by turning her hair into a battering ram and crushing him against it, sending both into a heap.

" _Throw me through a goddamn wall will ya…"_

An office chair came hurtling at her across the space, she bashed it aside only to see a section of cubical wall following right behind it. She grabbed it with her strands as it flipped to face her broadly, but Shadowbolt's boots bursting through it came too fast and they struck her in the side of the head as she turned away defensively. Mane-iac was knocked on her backside, but caught him as he tried to leap atop her, ropes of hair lashing out to suspend him just out of arm's reach.

"The tensile strength of your hair is impressive." Shadowbolt grunted, straining against the pull of several directions. "It must be over two tons."

"Couldn't say for sure." Struggling herself to keep him contained, she grit her teeth. "Ask Saddle Ranger, she'd be a good judge."

"Nonetheless, it must be * _grunt_ * an accumulative effort." Shadowbolt reached out in a flash, down to her utility belt.

Just as fast, she raised him even higher, but it was too late when his fist crushed the smoke bomb he'd snatched and plunged the two into a cloud of noxious fume. Mane-iac coughed and covered her mouth, the momentary faltering in her hair control allowed him to wrestle free on the opposite side of the haze.

" _I'm glad the Malice Mares don't fight this smart, or I'd-"_

Her thought was interrupted by movement in the smoke. Eyes protected well enough by the mask, they darted between the shapes in the darkness. To defend against a surprise attack, she spread her hair in something of a sphere around herself. Wherever his attack would come from she'd sense it coming.

What she didn't count on however, was the small office rug she was standing on literally being pulled out from underneath her. Thrown off her feet, Mane-iac steadied herself on a file cabinet turned on its side. He came in heavy, palming the back of her head to slam her face-first into the metal. She retaliated with an elbow uppercut that she felt connect with his chin, but he ate the blow well enough to hit a boot to the breadbasket that rocked her back into the cabinet.

One punch struck against her cheek, compressing her head into the side of the file cabinet with a thunderous bang, then another that caused the side sheet to come away from the seams. Despite the pain and funny lights in her vision, she anticipated the cadence of his blows, and dodged the third by moving her head to the side, and striking out with a punch to his left floating rib.

Shadowbolt buckled over, and taking the cabinet in her hair, Mane-iac smashed it into his face with such force she hesitated, thinking she had just shattered his skull. He took the blow better than she's hoped however, projected back to stagger against a support column, his head lolling. Capitalizing on the advantage, Mane-iac got to her feet and rushed in to finish the fight.

The adrenaline fueled battle lust mixed with a rising urge to loose her unrestrained fury pushed her to beat her victory out of him with her hands. It served only to compromise her discipline and blind her guard. Just as she was about to reach him, he deflected her arms with his own and kneed her in the gut. Out of the corner of her eye, Mane-iac saw him coming on, only reacting in time to stave off another barrage from Shadowbolt that moved her back step by step.

He came down with a hammer fist to her clavicle, but she swiveled her shoulder aside and countered by raising her right palm and drilling it into his jaw. Shadowbolt swung his left arm over, trapping her forearm against his chest, and though she drove a knee into his side, he struck back with a wild cross. Not thrown with visual precision or accounting for Mane-iac's own movement, the fist collided into her left breast.

Both combatants knew instantly what had occurred, recoiling in synchronicity. For once, Shadowbolt was stunned, his intimidating front giving way to awkward modesty.

"That… was unintentional."

Laying a hand on where she felt the tenderness gestating, she was as much taken aback by his reaction as by the incident itself.

"What? You think I've never been punched in the boob before?" She barked in indignant offense.

 _"_ Still doesn't seem appropriate." He grumbled, displeased by the situation.

" _This guy is unbelievable!"_ Reaching to her utility belt, Mane-iac drew out her collapsible baton, extending it with a flick of her wrist.

With an overhand strike the fight was resumed, Mane-iac's charge retaking the momentum. Shadowbolt tried to block a roundhouse kick to his liver, and managed to dodge the following back right heel kick, but caught the brunt of her baton across the mouth when it came whirling around. She pressed the assault, using her hair to grab onto one of the exposed ceiling cross-bars above to life herself up and drive both feet into his chest.

As he rolled across the floor, Mane-iac scrambled atop him, sitting over his shoulders and smashing down on his skull with the pommel of her cudgel, once, twice, three times. He staggered, and she brought it down for a finishing fourth, but he got a hand on the bottom of the baton. Dropping forward quickly, Shadowbolt held her secure as he planted her face into the floor.

Falling away from each other, groans of headaches were all they traded in the brief respite. A drabble of blood coming from the corner of Mane-iac's mouth was matched by a trickle seeping through Shadowbolt's hair.

"Ow." She complained, a hand on the side of her head. " _If Gigan were here, I'm sure he'd make some comment about me eating carpet. Ugh, get out of my head!"_

Shadowbolt, settled himself on his knees, peering at her sidelong. "Judging by the.. * _pant…pant_ *.. Amount of damage you've taken, either you have enhanced durability or healing, or your outfit is helping to compensate. What is it? Multi-layer Kevlar micro weave? Custom fabrication?"

"Found it on Amazon." Mane-iac swung her hair out to clothesline him, but he ducked and lurched forward. She tossed her baton in her left hand and swung, only for him to grab her wrist, force it down, and slam the top of his forehead between her eyebrows.

When her head snapped back, he reached out and yanked her hat down across her face for a quick distraction. In the time it took her to adjust it out of her way, Shadowbolt was on his feet and seized a rope-sized stretch of her hair.

"HHRRRAAAWWW!" He swung Mane-iac in a wide arc around to his left, towards the shattered windows. Two more tendrils however, latched onto his wrists, and pulled him off his feet. The result, was that just as she was flying into the open air, he too was drawn outside, where they both tumbled in a free-fall to the street below.

Putting a hand on to keep her hat from fluttering off, Mane-iac knew she could handle a plunge from this height with a construct of her hair. Her opponent however, she had no idea.

" _I just might live to regret this…"_

For his part, Shadowbolt was diving headlong, visibly nervous but not panicked. A tentacle of purple coiled around his mid-section, pulling him close to Mane-iac.

"Hang-on!" She yelled above the roar of the wind.

Shaping her hair into a bowl, she made sure they hit the ground at an angle, the kinetic energy of the impact transferring along the curve to whip them at a sharp but safely parallel course to the street. Ejected by the momentum, Mane-iac and Shadowbolt rolled across the asphalt, tired and beat-up. The will to fight sapped out of them, they painfully sat up, choosing to mind their aches than throw another punch.

"Thanks… I suppose." Shadowbolt grumbled, holding his arm and regarding her coolly.

"Could you have survived that fall?" She asked, genuinely curious, winching as she felt the inside of her mouth with her tongue.

He gave the question a few moments of thought before answering. "I don't know… probably."

Coming around the corner of the block, police sirens rose in intensity, the flashing red and blue lights stretching up the walls of the neighborhood ahead of them.

"I don't suppose you plan on sticking around to answer a few questions?" Pressing her hands to the street to push herself up, Mane-iac let her hair hang limply like a giant squid perched on her skull.

After a long sigh, and a roll to a single knee on the way up, Shadowbolt ran a finger across a crack in his goggle's right lens. "Sorry, I've still got work to do."

"Yeah, me neither." The pair stared at one another, waiting to see which one would break away first.

"I know you want to help." He said. "But I'm doing this my way. For your own good, stay out of it. You can have all the super powered freaks you want, leave this scum to me."

The police lights were closing in, and she narrowed her eyes. "How do you know the people you terrorize are even telling you the truth? How do you know they're not just telling you what you want to hear?"

"I've always been a very trusting person." At that moment, a frozen breeze chose to sweep through the streets, an auspicious sign. "And I don't think they want me coming back for more questions."

"Why fight me Shadowbolt? Why make an enemy out of me?" The tone of her plea carried both disappointment and threat.

"Because I am not under the impression that you can stop me." Backing away, Shadowbolt nodded. "By the way, I'm sorry."

"Sorry?" Mane-iac stiffened, "For what?"

 _"_ I stole another one of your smoke bombs."

" _WHAT?!"_

The small orb he had palmed when she pulled him close was thrown to the ground, where it bust into a hissing cloud. Tucking one of her scarf limbs over her face, she lost track of him as he disappeared in the smoke.

The police cruisers pulled up, the air cast off by their arrival dispelling the greater portion of the cloud. Stepping out of their vehicles, hands on the butts of their guns, the officers warily examined the scene.

"Mark, you see anybody?" One of them asked, wearing a thick police winter jacket and fur-lined hat on his head. He went as far as his car's front bumper but dared no further.

Up atop an adjacent building, one of the oldest in the city, Mane-iac sat on the ledge looking down at the officers. Next to her was a snarling stone gargoyle, a muscular feline beast with reptilian wings that she leaned her shoulder on.

With a long sigh, she pressed a button on one of the smaller devices around her utility belt, summoning the Black Beauty to her location.

"Why do I end up punching every guy I meet?" She mumbled.


	3. Part 3: To Reveal The Truth

**FRIDAY AFTERNOON**

" _Who is Shadowbolt?_

 _That's the question I kept asking myself."_

Not ten minutes out of bed, Mica limped through the dim lights of the lab where she crafted and improved the tools of her night job.

" _His speech pattern let slip of a man of intelligence, what that means is unclear, but his speculation on the composition of my outfit leads me to think his education is in some kind of engineering or research."_

Settling down stiffly into her black leather high-backed chair, Mica Hackett groaned uncomfortably as the aches and pains cried foul throughout her body. Having just risen from bed and still dressed in a slightly oversized sweater and sweatpants, her hair constrained into a long ribbon for the sake of ease, and her utility belt draped across her lap.

" _Ow. That phrase has become the bulk of my vocabulary after the fight with Shadowbolt last night."_

The toll the fight had taken out of her shown on her face, and her normally passive, calm demeanor was now marred as much by misery as her body was the keloid scars.

 _"I'd been banged-up before. Pummeled by Saddle Ranger, hit by cars, one particularly bad episode of loss of self-control. So having to wheeze my way though another day wasn't the biggest crisis. Just another pain in my ass, of which there were currently a few."_

The spacious quarters of her multi-functional secret lab were half-illuminated, her workspace around the 60-inch monitor a hodge-podge of equipment she designed and built herself. Among them, a microscope that resembled an ophthalmologist construct, hand-crafted to specifications so precise she could catch a paramecium and skin it like wild game. It was designed not just to be a few leagues above any commercially available microscope, it was designed to work for her double irises.

A few feet away, was a machine she had actually grafted together from disparate bits of equipment, sort of an all-in-one DNA analyzer.

 _"Fortunately, despite our differences, I had managed to procure a parting gift from my new acquaintance."_

Extracting from one small compartment of the belt the bloodied pad she'd collected last night at the train station, she smeared a bit of the crimson liquid on a slide, and sandwiched it with another. Fixing them into the stage clips, she used both hands and a few tendrils of hair to manipulate the viewing apparatus, each of them adjusting one of several dials and switches. Without looking, she opened a drawer on the DNA machine, deposited the rest of the blood into a small pool of liquid surrounded by blue lights, and shut the compartment.

She pressed a lone button above the sample drawer, and the machine hummed to life, multiple analytical tools going to work on the biological material. Never having taken her gaze out of the microscope, she observed what was left of the viable material.

" _Bright red blood… arterial bleeding… wait, what's that?"_

Magnifying the image of the specimen for a much closer look, she noticed something was off about the blood cells, they had a curious shine to them. Mica's eyebrow arched, and one of the switches on the side was slowly levered downwards. Across the concave surface of the cells, there was a shimmering texture, like it was crawling with a billion even tinier moving bits.

" _What on Earth am I seeing?"_ She asked herself. Her fingers found the light adjustment dial, and increased the backlight to get a better view. As soon as she did so however, the cells immediately became dull and inert.

" _Well that's different…"_

"Something for your bruises, Ma'am?" Approaching from behind, a polished man, bespoke in a spotless black tuxedo over a blue silk shirt and coal-grey tie, carried a silver tray with a porcelain teacup and matching pot. He was older, with grey hair trimmed to perfection and kindly eyes.

"I thought some chamomile would help sooth your wounded pride."

Removing her face from the device, she gave her old friend Charles an unamused glower.

"My pride is just fine. It's my jaw that keeps bothering me." She said, moving her mandible from side to side. Mica accepted the cup with both hands, and gave it a light blow before taking a sip.

 _"I'm not a tea connoisseur or anything, but a good cup does help me unwind the tension of a bad night. Charles knows my moods pretty well._ "

She set the cup down on the counter and flexed her fist open and closed a few times, feeling the small kinks left behind from the fight.

"Shadowbolt's a good fighter, fast, but I've got far better training. He sure was smart though, the longer we fought the more he figured me out."

Charles set the tray down beside the microscope, trading it for her utility belt, and looping it around his arm.

"And he let slip no clue as to who he was?"

"No. not directly anyways…" Turning her attention to the computer screen, she called out to it.

"Computer, search for: Cornet Labs."

"Searching for, Cornet Labs." The artificial voice repeated. In half a second, the screen was filled with references and several pictures. What Mica saw among the links only increased the mystery.

"Massive accident destroys lab." Mica read off the screen. Some of the accompanying pictures showed the building before the accident, "Experimental energy program backfires, causes explosion, claims the lives of project scientists."

"Good lord." Charles gasped.

 _"Seeing the news articles again brought me back a few years, during my… previous life. Back when I wouldn't have looked too deep into things like this. I remembered Cornet labs used to be on the northwest outskirts of the city, out in the rural lands. It occurred to me that if I had just remembered this little detail when I had finally met up with Shadowbolt, perhaps I could have started a real dialog. Though in my defense I suppose I was a little preoccupied."_

The next collage of pictures showed the rubble and devastation left in the wake of the explosion, the façade of the building standing in front of a crater. Debris scattered for a mile in every direction, even a report of a middle-aged woman who had been struck in the back by a bit of metal shrapnel. Mica continued to click into one of the articles.

"It says the accident occurred in the middle of the night, when it was just the three project staff and two security guards in the building."

"By the grace of God, the security men were having a smoke break outside." Charles observed from the text. "Got thrown fifty yards and suffered internal bleeding, concussions, fractured vertebrae, but alive."

"The scientists weren't so lucky." Navigating through more links, Mica found more of the information she was looking for. "The three of them were working on some new energy technology for space vehicles."

 _"The specifics were omitted… interesting."_

"Something went wrong, and there was an explosion. They think whatever it was obliterated the bodies, no remains were found."

Her mind's eye flashed back to the box she found in the subway room.

 _"If the lab was blown to hell, then where did that box come from? And why was it at the end of a trail of blood?"_

Scrolling along, she came across a black and white picture of the team provided to the newspapers by a family member. It showed the group in their white lab coats, posed behind a long counter topped with various bits of machinery that looked like they belonged in a science-fiction movie.

 _"The black and white photo had their names and positions under it: Gary Straub, aerospace engineer, Stacey Meriwether, particle physicist, and Thomas Jacobs, theoretical physicist._

Staring at the screen, Mica wondered what any of this could have to do with Shadowbolt, if there was any connection at all

 _"The box could be a complete coincidence, maybe he'd had it from long before, maybe he found it in the garbage. But then what are the odds of having that box, from that lab? It was too damn much of a coincidence."_

A chime from the DNA alerted Mica to the results. "Error. Cannot complete analysis. Unknown elements are present."

"Unknown elements?" She repeated, as if saying it aloud herself would untangle her confusion. Thinking quickly, she gave a new command.

"Computer, isolate contaminants."

"No contaminants found. All elements are genetically coupled."

 _"It didn't make any sense…"_

"Perhaps Mr. Bolt is a Martian of some kind." Charles suggested with a measure of dry humor.

"Wouldn't that be interesting." Spinning back around to the blood she had between the slats, Mica focused back in on the tiny cells. They remained as dreary as she had left them. Adjusting the backlight, she noticed the strange fur-like texture coating the cells rippled in response.

 _"Well that can't be an accident."_

The more she turned the light down, the more active the cells became. She dimmed the light as much as she could while still being able to see them, following the reaction."

"What the hell are you?"

"Is this him?" Holding up a sketch pad Mica had hastily drawn on when she got back, Charles examined the rough outline of Shadowbolt.

"Frightening fellow."

"You should meet him in person." Mica got up from her seat and headed for the changing pod, a noticeable stiffness in her back. "Great sense of humor."

"I do hope The Mane-iac isn't planning on a night of acrobatics and daring-do." The butler said, replacing the tea cup onto the platter with a disappointed sigh. "She may find it a bit more, challenging than usual."

"Well…" She bent her back and touched the floor to stretch out her spine. With a long exhale she unfurled herself to an erect posture and mentally prepared herself. "If it were easy Charles, everyone would do it."

Mica climbed into the pod, allowing the doors to slid shut around her. After a moment's notice and a whirl of machinery, the glowing chamber popped back open and the fully costumed Mane-iac sat up with a grunt of determination

"Besides, I'm just going to visit an old friend."

 **LATER**

"Motoring."

Detective Stephen Langoud flipped through the keys on the ring as he approached his personal vehicle in the underground parking garage of the precinct. With a paper bag of day-old doughnuts and half a sandwich in hand, he rounded the bumper, using the cuff of his sleeve to wipe off the corner of his mouth.

"What's your price for flight? In finding mister right?"

He had the tune stuck in his head all day after hearing a snippet of it on the radio, and at the end of his shift found himself absent-mindedly muttering the melody. "And something that rhymes with 'light'."

Langoud shot a glance to the backseat of his car, making sure the old break room coffee maker was still there. He may not have been given _explicit_ permission to take it, but since the new one was up and running, no-one seemed to object.

He found the proper key and opened his driver's side door, slipping into the seat of his 1990 Coltler Manehattan. Tossing the bag to the passenger seat, he stuck the key in the ignition.

"MOTORING!" He yelled out within the protective confines of his car.

"Please stop."

"BAH!" He yelped, banging his thighs against the bottom of the steering wheel as he jumped in surprise. He twisted in his seat to find Mane-iac staring back at him from under the brim of her hat.

"You really can't sing Steve."

Taking a deep breath to calm down, he mustered his bravado. "Oh thank god." He chuckled nervously. "It's just you. For a second I thought my ex-wife had found me."

"Sorry to scare you. But I decided it best to stay incognito." Checking the entryway to the garage, she made sure to keep her face hidden.

"Good thing." He agreed. "Word is that when the commissioner found out about the damage you two caused last night, he hit the roof. Put out the order to arrest either one of you on sight."

This did not come as a surprise, but as least it wasn't the command to hunt her down. "So are you gonna take me in?" She asked.

"Pfft, as if I could."

"In that case I was wondering if you could help me with something."

" _While there was plenty I could learn off the internet, there were some things that just couldn't be found online."_

"I'm digging into Shadowbolt, and I need you to get me anything the police might have on file regarding the explosion at Cornet labs three years ago. I think there might be a connection."

"Oh yeaaaahhh, I remember that." Putting a hand across his mouth, Langoud tried to think of where something like that might be kept. "Not sure how much of anything we'd have, it was an accident, not a crime."

"Could you just check? Please?" She knew he was risking his career just by talking to her. It wasn't easy for her to admit it to herself, let alone anyone else, but when the pressures of what she did really weighed on her, it was good to know there were people she could count on.

He thought for a moment longer. "Alright, let me go take a look." Getting back out of the car, the detective headed back inside. Mane-iac hunkered down in the seat to lower her profile.

Ten minutes later, he returned, going straight to the door of the back seat.

"Gonna need this." He said, taking the coffee maker in hand before closing the door and heading back to the offices.

Ten more minutes later, Langoud sat back down in his driver's seat and handed a file over his shoulder.

 _"It wasn't much, about half an inch worth of contents. But it was better than nothing."_

"Now I didn't look in it, for my own sakes." Steve ran a hand through his hair. "But I hope it does you some good. Turns out the parent company took ownership of most of the stuff that wasn't blown to bits, and most of the stuff we had was junked years ago."

"Thanks again Detective." Mane-iac got out of the back seat, and started to slink away when another thought caught her.

"Stephen, what was with the coffee maker?"

"Oh that." He grumbled. "Had to make a deal with the guy working the evidence lock-up. He drove a hard bargain."

"Sorry to hear that." She apologized, feeling genuinely regretful for what approximated as a friend. "I'll make it up to you."

"Really? 'Cause I could-" Stunned by her proposition, he put his arm around the headrest to face the backseat, only to find it empty and with no trace of the lady.

"She's just playing hard to get." He told himself.

Dropping into the alley a block from the precinct where she had parked Black Beauty, Mane-iac opened the door with a tendril of hair and slumped into her seat. She turned on the heat before the door was even closed, the winter chill starting to work its way through her outfit.

" _Let's see what the vultures left me."_

The file contained a loose assortment of post-incident reports, written by police investigators on site and a few follow-ups dated throughout the next three weeks after.

 _"There wasn't much in the way of anything helpful, it was mostly the facts of the accident scene, witness and survivor statements. One curious thing however, was a report of Government agents arriving to conduct their own investigation. They identified themselves as working for the Aeronautics Administration, but nothing more than that. Cordoned off the site for a day as they examined the debris, bringing in their own forensic teams and taking various samples of material. A picture stapled to the report showed a trio of people covered head-to-toe in protective suits extracting soil from the center of the crater._

 _I had to wonder just what exactly I was digging into, and if any of this actually had any authentic connection to Shadowbolt. Still, it was pretty interesting."_

Part of the alley was illuminated for a few seconds by the headlights of a passing car. Glancing back to see if they warranted any more investigation, Mane-iac decided to take her late-night reading somewhere else.

The Black Beauty pulled out of the alley on the other end, and turned south.

 _"Plenty of places in the city to duck away for a little bit."_

She raised the volume on her police scanner, _"No excuse to ignore the rest of the crime in the city on account of one guy."_

Passing under a bridge, her fingers tapped the steering wheel in deliberation.

"Motoring…" She muttered melodically under her breath.

A streetlight shining into her cab as the car took a right turn swept over the uncovered items from the file, the momentum of the turn yanking one picture from where it was lodged between sheets and onto the floor. The light allowed her to catch sight of its fall, and not wanting to lose any part of it to a casual accident, a couple strands of hair reached down and plucked it back up.

When she saw the photo, she slammed on the breaks and came to a skidding, rubber-smoking halt in the middle of the street. Grabbing the picture in her hand and clicking on the overhead light, she stared at it in disbelief. There, standing in the picture, were the same three project scientists she'd seen in the online article, Straub, Meriwether, and Jacobs. Only this shot was taken while they had been at work, with Straub overlooking a design of some fuselage, Meriwether working out equations on a chalkboard, and Jacobs operating on some large metal chamber. And around Jacobs' neck, were a pair of protective goggles.

The same goggles Shadowbolt wore.

Even more to her luck this photo was in color, and Mane-iac could see that his hair, while cut in a short, conservative style, was the same indigo blue.

"Thomas Jacobs… How the hell did you survive?" The whispered question came out in a huff of vapor. For another minute she sat in place, trying to think through all the possible explanations as to how a man could survive an explosion that decimated a building. Not only that, but come back with superpowers. An approaching car in her rearview snapped her back to the present, and she put her foot back on the accelerator. Snapping off her overhead lamp and she drove, she peeled back the mask from over her right eye, and held it up to the mirror. After a soft chime, a small panel slid out from the center console, a miniature version of her computer in the lab.

"Computer, information on Thomas Jacobs, Cornet Labs, deceased."

"Thomas Jacobs." The small window buffered the search results, cobbled together from multiple databases, and displayed them in chronological order.

 _"Jacobs was quite an achiever from what I could tell. Honor Society in high school, joined the Army Corps of Engineers, retired after 10 years with a medical discharge due to a knee injury, but not before utilizing his benefits to go to college. That's where he got into physics, ultimately getting a Master's degree. 43 at the time of the accident._

 _Intelligent, determined, resourceful, sounds like Shadowbolt alright. Aside from that, the information got curiously Spartan: No children, parents deceased, unmarried, employed by the Aeronautics Administration until four years ago._

 _Hmm… if he was out of the Government, then why were their agents on the scene faster than kids to an ice cream truck?"_

"ALL UNITS, ALL UNITS." The police scanner barked. "Report of a break-in at M&T Shampoo factory, suspects said to be armed and dangerous, please respond."

 _"Break in on the east side. I could use a little warm-up before my rematch."_

The Black Beauty was thrown into the next gear, and sped off.

Nestled in the industrial district of Maretropolis' east end, the Mane & Tail Shampoo factory loomed silently among the other buildings. Sticking out from the top two floors, was the flashing neon sign that animated a lady dumping their brand of hair product onto her long locks. She'd beaten the police to the scene, and parked her car in a dim alley, throwing a black tarp over it for good measure.

Guarding the inside of the doorway, a very nervous, very sweaty overweight man in a grey turtle neck and ski-mask glanced back to where his two accomplices were busy relieving the supply room of some chemicals.

"Hurry up you guys!" He cursed.

In the room, two other burley men in masks were working together to roll a metal barrel onto a pallet where three others waited.

"Boss said to make sure not to shake these up too much." One of them grunted, hefting the container onto the wood.

"Something to do with molecules or something."

"What do you think he's using this all for?" His partner asked. "Gonna make his own knock off brand?"

"Will you guys just load the stuff on the truck already?" Door Guard brushed the mask against his forehead to soak up the sweat beginning to drip into his eyes. "I don't wanna be here when the cops show up, or worse that Shadowbolt psycho."

The others, having put the last barrel in place, stretched their backs out before one of them headed off.

Turning back to his post, Door Guard shivered and stuck his head out to check around the corner.

A python of purple hair coiled around the lower part of his face and lifted him off his feet. He raised his gun but more strands stuffed themselves behind the trigger as his finger squeezed on it, and pinned his hands behind his back.

"What? I don't even get a mention?" Mane-iac stared him down as she dragged him outside, in her voice was no hint of comedy.

"How many?" She asked. "Not including yourself."

The man mumbled behind the rope, his brow furrowed in confusion. Not that he could see, Mica rolled her eyes.

"Just… blink."

Door Guard blinked twice in rapid succession.

His feet kicked a bit as her strands wrapped around his neck, applying pressure to the carotid arteries. Eventually they went limp.

Leaning his back against the barrels, the man who had stayed behind was twiddling a knife between his fingers when a number of tendrils wrapped themselves around his limbs and pulled him up and over the tops. He tried to scream and struggle, but found he was strapped to the containers.

Reaching down, Mane-iac removed the mask, surprised to see who was under it.

 _"It was one of the same guys from the subway tunnel last night, one of the two who got away."_

"This the second night in a row I run into you guys. Who are you working for?"

"Dunno." He said, albeit strained under the grip of the hair around his jaw. "Never gave us a name."

"What does he look like?" She pressed.

"Dunno that neither, never seen him in person. Always talks to us from a TV, keeps himself all shrouded, you know, like one of 'dem, anonymous whistleblower types."

"So what do you know?" Lifting him off the barrels, she suspended him upside-down, his long coat slipping down to overreach his hands and head. "What does he want with Shadowbolt?"

A panic began to overtake him as she began to swing him up and down, hoping the vertigo would shake a clear answer loose. "I dunno what he wants with that freak! Swear to god!"

"Swear to me!" Mane-iac barked.

She was about to ratchet-up her powers of persuasion to tumble dry, when she heard the rumble of an engine coming their way. The headlights flashed on at the last second, the forklift about to collide into them.

In a single heartbeat, she flipped her captive out of harm's way into a stack of plastic tubs and jumped straight up, the ends of the fork bars stabbing right through where she had been. Landing on the roof, she used her tendrils to secure herself, staring straight down at the driver whose startled eyes met hers.

 _"It was the guy I had cornered in the room, the one I saved from Shadowbolt. I could see the same fear in his eyes."_

He swerved left and right to shake her off, but she clung on despite being pitched like a boat in a storm. Like a spider she crawled over the side and tried to pull him out of the seat.

"Hey! Let go!" The man cried, taking both hands off the steering wheel to fend her off. His attention diverted, no one would blame him for not seeing where the floor dropped four feet at the loading dock.

The prowess of her enhanced vision catching sight of the hazard ahead of time, Mane-iac braced her body to the overhead guard. Driving over the edge, the forks jammed into the concrete, providing the fulcrum as the vehicle continued to somersault. Columns of her hair shot out, creating a series of spokes that supported the forklift and enabled it to roll forward until it landed back down on its wheels.

Crashing into the opposite wall, the driver was flung into his side of the loading backrest. He stumbled out of the cab with a hand on his head, trying to make a break for freedom.

Mane-iac came flying after him with a dropkick, striking him in the back where he sprawled to the floor.

"Whoever your boss is, needs to hire better goons."

Extracting a pair of handcuffs from the back of her utility belt, she got one wrist secured when something heavy tackled her. They rolled in a heap, white boots reflexively lashing out to kick and catching a big shoulder.

Separating, she realized it was the man she'd tossed into the empty containers, and he was swinging for the fences. Big, meaty fists came at her, but she weaved and countered, landing a blow of her own on his mouth.

While some criminals had a glass jaw, others she had discovered, had jaws of iron. He was one of the latter. The man's head moved slightly to the side, then snapped back without any noticeable effect. Like a bear he charged and seized her with both hands to the side of her face, trying to crush her skull like a coconut. Her suit could only do so much to deflect the pressure in such a small spot.

Both of her hands dung into the sides of her belt, sliding the fingers into a set of knuckle dusters and unlocking them from their mechanism. She struck upwards, hitting the tip of his left elbow and eliciting a cry of pain, but not dislodging the grip. Again she struck, two more times, and finally he pulled his arm back.

Mane-iac slung her left arm around his right, pinning it into her armpit, and proceeded to land a punch into his breadbasket. His only reaction was to huff, and reach back out to grab her wrist. A normal person would easily be rag-dolled by such a brute, and she could feel the hundred-or-so pounds of muscle straining to control her. But Mane-iac had been through the chemical baptism, increasing her strength to just above peak. Still, it was like wrestling a gorilla.

Amidst a trading of grunts and snarls, she waiting until he tried to press over her, and when he did, she dropped her weight and swiveled her hips into a hasty aikido toss. With him on his back, she transitioned into a mount over his chest, and drove a shot into his left temple to disabuse any violent retaliation, and finished with a short left jab between his eyes to put him out.

Once sedated, she slid off a chest that could span a bed.

" _Jeez, was this guy's father an ox or something?"_

The clink of metal bracelets brought her vision up, where she looked directly into the muzzle of what she realized was a forty-caliber pistol. In slow motion she heard the hammer being cocked back and the firing pin preparing to strike the primer.

In a flash a tendril of hair was stuffed down the barrel, the round going off inside the chamber. With nowhere for the bullet to go, the gas was forced elsewhere, and caused the gun to explode, the slide and frame separating violently.

"AAAAHHHHH!" Forklift screeched as the parts went flying, his hand a bloody, misshapen thing. Dropping to his knees and clutching the wrist, he wept. It lasted for all of two seconds before a booted foot cracked his jaw and knocked him out.

Standing over her work, Mane-iac let her heart rate calm back down.

"THERE SHE IS!"

"FREEZE!"

Mica twirled in place to see two policemen leveling their own weapons on her from the doorway to the rest of the factory.

 _"Shit."_ She said to herself as her eye patches widened.

Sprinting out of the supply room the way she had entered, bullets pinging off the walls and two frustratingly fit patrolmen on her tail, Mane-iac dashed around the corner, leaped over the body of Door Guard, and slung herself off the street.

The two policemen, nearly stumbling over the unconscious thug, thought better of their plan and stopped to secure the actual criminals.

Coming down off a low roof and into the alley where she had parked, she came to a stop next to her disguised car. Putting aside the newly acquired aches and pains on top of the old ones, she noticed that something was off about how the tarp looked.

When she removed it, she could have alerted the entire city's police force with her cursing had she not contained herself.

The Black Beauty, was upside-down.

 **SATURDAY NIGHT**

 _"Hot as I was after spending every waking hour today restoring Black Beauty to her proper lust and shine, I had to come at things tonight with a cool head._

 _Not only did I expect there to be a lot of muscle around the mob meeting, I sure as hell expected Shadowbolt to be stalking around somewhere. And there was no way I was going to let him get away from me a second time."_

In the south end of Maretropolis, where the industrial district bled into harbor freight and port shipping facilities, Mane-iac perched her elbows along the guard wall of the dormant parking structure. Spired five-floors off the ground, it provided an ideal place for her to conduct a little recon. The freshly buffed Black Beauty parked behind her, she leaned forward, using her elbows to support the telescope.

 _"This part of the city was notorious for being a haven for the seedier elements of society. Various labor unions controlled what went on here, in daylight and at night, and being that they were interested in profit and influence over everything else, their turf was often used as neutral territory for the mafia. Not only was tonight one giant mea culpa for the shooting at the restaurant, but it was also serving as a war planning summit. A war on Shadowbolt."_

Below her, the fish cannery had become the center of late-night activity. She scanned the property through the green filter of the night vision, taking mental note of guards, vehicles, access and egress routes.

 _"A bevy of cars easily as expensive as the Black Beauty were parked around the building, a dozen on my side, more on the opposite. Parked around the area on side streets, were cars of… lesser value. No doubt the hired help and some of the lower ranking crew."_

Several men, dressed in long winter coats over their casual suits and carrying submachine guns hung from slings over their shoulders kept watch from their positions.

 _"Two men posted at each door, two on the roof with NVG's, another two guarding the cars that I can see. Probably another two-dozen guns inside to guard the meeting. They're smart, but they're underestimating Shadowbolt."_

Ducking behind the wall, Mane-iac folded the scope in half, replacing it in the back of her utility belt.

 _"And they're underestimating me."_

One of the guards watching over the vehicles leaned his rump against the wooden guardrail buffering the side of the building, letting the drum magazine of his Thompson rest on his thigh. His lean build shivering slightly under the layers of warm clothing, he adjusted the wool cap.

"Shadowbolt ain't stupid enough to come here." He grumbled, his pencil thin mustache contorted in a miserable scowl. "Freezin' my ass off for nothing."

The dart stuck into his neck without a sound, the thin grey body with the little poof of red fur on the end injecting the medium dose of sedative into his bloodstream. He raised a hand to feel for the spot, but consciousness left him before the fingers reached.

As his body began to slump, purple tentacles held him up, fixing him into a sitting position on the wooden bar, and propping the weapon across his lap. The shadow of the spot would hide him long enough.

Moving past the sleeping guard, Man-iac pressed her body to the stucco, the hundreds of individual hair ends finding holds to dig themselves into. Crawling up the side of the building, Mane-iac's hair shimmered in waves like a house centipede, continuously moving upwards with thousands of tiny grips.

The top of her hat, then her eyes popped over the roof, hesitating just long enough to see the two roof guards staring off in different directions. She took the window of opportunity, slinking over the edge and finding the roof access door unlocked. The blow dart pipe raised to her mouth, she watched every move they made as she slowly opened the door, and stepped inside.

"Thank you all for coming gentlemen." Two long rectangular tables had been pushed together, around them were seated the top Mafioso in Maretropolis. Most of them captains, but sitting at the head, were the three heads of the city's mob families.

Antonio Ponezetti the godfather of the south end, Ricardo Flankastro, godfather of the north end, and Dominick Stallionato godfather of the west end and most powerful of the three. Together, these men divided the city into three parts, and until recently had maintained a cordial truce of respect and deference.

"I'm glad you all could make it." Addressing them, was an intermediary, not connected to any of the families, in a grey suit and medium length blond hair, grey eyes peered keenly through his glasses.

Antonio, who had to breathe through a mask attached to an oxygen tank hooked to the back of his wheelchair, glared at the younger man with ire in his black eyes. Ricardo, white hair trimmed with class stewed under his black velvet coat, his bejowled chin a compliment to the prodigious girth of his belly. Dominick, the oldest, silently appraised the speaker. Tiny translucent hairs carpeting his otherwise bald head. He was a wiry old man, years of outwitting his rivals having left him the disposition of an experienced predator, calm and observant.

Smiling, the speaker opened his posture to make himself as non-threatening as possible. "My name is Lukas, my benefactor would like to thank you for taking the time out of your night to-"

"We are old." Stallionato interrupted with a raised hand and a gentle voice. "Your benefactor is taking what little time we have left, please get to the point."

Slightly taken off script by the composed yet authoritative directive, the speaker got over his stumbling block and continued with a bowed head of regard.

"Absolutely Don Stallionato. My benefactor understands that you are experiencing a growing problem with this Shadowbolt character. He would like to offer his services in getting rid of him for you."

"And just who the hell is your benefactor, huh?" Flankastro spat, his personal grudge against the new vigilante shining through.

"He has not authorized me to reveal that information at this time." The man apologized. "But, he is willing to meet with you all in person once a deal is reached."

"And what is his price?" Dominick asked, narrowing his gaze.

"Merely some logistical assistance in a minor personal affair that he understands you are well capable of providing."

Ricardo turned to face his senior. "He wants a favor."

"Essentially yes." Lukas admitted. "But one that you can easily afford."

Stallionato leaned forward in his seat. "What kind of, _favor_ , are we talking about?"

A crack of nervousness broke across Lukas' face, "Sorry but, again, I am not authorized to reveal that information at this time."

"Then what are you authorized to do?" An angry Flankastro slammed his fist on the table. "You have one sentence left to stop jerking us around, before we throw you in the Damsire!"

 _"The Damsire? In this cold?"_ Mane-iac thought to herself, watching the events below from her spot in the rafters. _"That river must be half-frozen over on a night like this."_

Finally stuck for words, the young man was saved by the ringing of the cell phone on the table. Glancing down, he saw the number and snatched it immediately.

"Yes Sir?… You what?… O-okay I-… Alright."

"Was that him? Yanking on your leash?" Ricardo scoffed.

"Indeed it was." Lukas said with a tone of disappointment. "He wants to address you himself."

"He's here?" The elder Don asked, glancing around the room.

"Not quite." Bending down, Lukas was grabbing his briefcase when no less than six of the other men at the table got to their feet, reaching inside their jacket breasts.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Putting his free hand in the air for them all to see, he slowly placed the case on the table, and unlocked the latch. "It's just a tablet."

Warily, the men eased back into their seats. Lukas took out a white tablet device, and configured the protective case into a triangular support to enable the 10-inch screen to face the _paterfamilias_. He pressed the power button, and the screen morphed to display the shape of a man in silhouette.

"Hello gentlemen." The modified voice purred.

 _"The man on the screen. The one those goons were working for."_ Crawling heel-toe across the steel beam, Mane-iac positioned herself to get a better view of the image.

"My associate is not quite used to dealing with such commanding men." The figure moved little, but had the shape of a man from the waist up sitting at a table. "My deal, is that in exchange for your help, I will deliver Shadowbolt to you within 24-hours."

Taken aback, the Mafioso looked among each other. Stallionato leaned is face towards the screen and gave the mysterious figure a hard examination.

"You can guarantee this?" He asked.

"Most precisely. The only question is, do you want him dead or alive?"

With strained breathing, Ponezetti removed his breathing mask, hand trembling and face stone cold. His voice was gravely and weak, but still carried a venomous hatred.

"Alive."

Outside, one of the vehicle guards caught sight of his partner asleep against the wall. Shaking his head, he walked over.

"Wake the hell up Johnny!" A slap on the shoulder brought no response, it only moved the gun to slip limply between the man's legs.

"What?" Taking a flashlight out of his pocket, the guard shined the light in his partner's face, seeing now that he was out cold. Closer inspection revealed the dart still embedded in the neck.

"HEY! SOMEBODY'S HERE!"

Word caught on fast and soon the yelling reached the inside, startling the assembled table into a flurry of action. Bodyguards swooped in on their respective leaders and hurried them away and towards the cars.

Lukas, thoroughly terrified, snapped up his tablet, shoved it in the briefcase, and was turning to make his own escape.

He would have made it, if not for the woman in a gold costume and mask who dropped down in front of him.

"I need to talk to your boss."

Mane-iac seized him by the lapels of his jacket and threw him onto the table. Her hair tendrils secured his wrists and ankles to the surface as she took the briefcase in hand, slamming it down on his abdomen.

"Please no!" He cried, squirming like a cat that didn't want to be held. "Nobody's supposed to use that but me!"

"I'll tell him you're indisposed." Opening the briefcase, she grabbed the tablet and turned it on, coming face-to-digital face with the man in black.

At the vehicles, Ricardo Flankastro was huffing his way towards his car, stopping for a moment to brace himself on the hood.

"You two!" He told his men, "Stay here and cover our escape. I'll send a car for you."

Unenthused, they nonetheless obeyed and posted themselves to handle anything that came their way.

Flankastro turned and knocked on the driver's window, where his man was waiting behind the wheel to evacuate him at a moment's notice. The knock however garnered no response.

Confused and increasingly agitated, Ricardo bent down to start yelling at his driver to unlock the doors, but saw to his fright that he was slumped over in the seat, a rivulet of blood trickling down from a gash in his scalp.

All he could manage was a gasp before something grabbed the back of his head and smashed his face through the glass.

"Mane-iac, it's so very good to meet you at last." Mica could hear the smarm in his voice carry through the audio masking. "They always say ladies are much prettier in person."

"How about we get together then?" She jabbed back. "You tell me all about your plans, and I'll leave you conscious enough to greet the police."

"That does sound marvelous, but you simply must bring your little playmate Shadowbolt with you."

"What do you want with him?" Her tone dropped. "What's his story?"

"A very terrible one I'm afraid. Though… not as terrible as it will become."

Dictating that he take a less direct, and therefore predictable escape route, Antonio Ponezetti was being wheeled out of a side door, instead of the more accessible handicap ramp. However, this plan forced them to go through a somewhat narrow hallway. A menacingly dark hallway in the late hour. Two of his men running point rounded a corner, weapons up just to make sure all ahead was clear. The soldier pushing the chair paused, waiting for the signal to progress.

After a few tense seconds, the wave of the arm came, and with a methodical haste, the wheelchair was moving.

They came around the corner, and before they could stop, the chair ran into the downed body of one of the men. Momentum thrusting them onward however, Antonio was pitched out of his seat and atop his fallen guard.

"Christ!" His remaining man yelped, rushing to help his _pater_ back into the chair. With some hurried action, the wheezing Ponezetti was belted into the seat to avoid another spill, and they continued towards the exit, which lay in the form of a glass door not ten meters away.

Half the distance left, Antonio felt the chair jerk backwards, and then the sensation of his man's hold on the handlebars come away, letting the chair roll on a few more feet. The hallway was too dark to see much of anything around him, except where the ambient light of the outside gleamed off the door.

A hand, a terrifyingly strong hand came around his face and pinned the mask over his mouth and nose. Antonio tried to shake himself loose, but the belt held him in place, and sheer panic confounded his efforts to unbuckle it and claw at the arm at the same time. The presence behind him made no sound, said nothing, offered no final taunt, but there was the sound of the knob of his oxygen tank being turned.

He felt the gas pressure increase instantly, until he couldn't exhale.

All he could do was watch his reflection in the door writhe, seeing his own horrified eyes staring back at him as he tried to breathe.

"Who are you?" Mane-iac demanded, ready to twist the tablet in half. "What do you want?"

"What I want! Mane-iac…" The surge of anger was stifled just as quickly as it flared. "Ironically enough, is a little recognition."

Somewhere, up in the top right corner of the screen, a series of flashing lights passed by the corner of a window.

"Now, do be a dear and bring me Shadowbolt before he kills the last of the men capable of helping me."

Mane-iac's bewilderment was betrayed by the scrunch of her mask.

"He's there Mane-iac!" The dark figure exclaimed. "He's at the facility with you!"

"How do you-" Her question was cut off when the screen went black. Outside, a grown man screamed.

"Shadowbolt's here? Oh God!" Lukas whined, trying to pull away from her strands.

"Oh be quiet!" Yanking him upright, she laid a forearm across his face, knocking him out.

 _"He may be a few circuits short of a neural processor, but at least Shadowbolt's no coward. Hmm… I'll have to thank Gigan for that phrase."_

Shots rang out, bullets swallowed up by the shadows as Dominick Stallionato's men encircled him, escorting their patriarch to safety. The men were nervous, reacting to every phantom of movement they perceived.

His time in the army had served him well, given him a tactical mind. Now, his men treated him like one of the VIP's he'd protected in his youth, providing three-hundred and sixty degree security while moving through hostile territory.

More importantly, it instilled in him a mind that was cool under pressure, didn't flinch in the face of death, wasn't afraid of what lurked in the dark.

Police sirens could already be seen coming down the streets, and if they arrived, he knew the chances of Shadowbolt daring to attack would be reduced greatly.

In a few moments they were all loaded into black SUV, doors locked, windows up, and ready to roll.

The vehicle started with a whiplash, not wasting a second in accelerating. They were just about to pull onto the street when Dominick caught a flash of motion outside.

The SUV was struck on its right side, above the rear tire, causing the vehicle to spin so violently, every neck inside snapped to the shoulder. Left side tires found purchase, forcing the momentum to transfer sideways, and send the vehicle onto its flank.

Stallionato watched from a daze as one of his best men, the one who had been on his right, recovered his wits, pulled out his handgun, and stood up to open the door that was now above them. After some muscle and grunting, he managed to force the warped frames apart, and began climbing out to point his weapon at any oncoming threat.

Instead, the rear window was kicked in, not in a shower of bits but as a single pane. An arm reached in, grabbed the man by his shin, and pulled him out kicking and screaming. The screaming only lasted a second longer.

For Dominick, the worst part was always the waiting.

The glass pane was drawn out, and next he felt hands on his shoulders before being dragged back into the frosty night air. But even an old Stallionato still has some fight left in him.

He curled his knees into his chest and kicked out, hitting what his instincts told him was a human jawbone. Unlike the cordite-scented sands of a beach 40 years ago however, these hands didn't let go. Dragged to his feet, he found himself shoved against the underside of the SUV, returning a hard glare of his own to the one who held him.

"Dominick Stallionato." Shadowbolt growled, his mouth quivering in rage. "You tried to kill me."


	4. Part 4: To the Light of Day

**CORNET LABS**

 **THE NIGHT OF THE ACCIDENT**

"SOMETHING'S WRONG! THE REACTOR IS OVER HEATING!"

 _"Stacey's scream filled the control room, piercing above the alarms."_

Thomas Jacobs, Stacey Meriwether, and Gary Straub went into emergency mode, dashing among the control panels on their side of the room. The translucent panel separating them from the other room alternated in flashes of white and blue light. Contained in the room beyond, the rumble from the reaction chamber continued to increase in volume. The seams of the chamber, shaped like a sphere in the middle of a vertical cylinder with a number of pipes and cables tethering it to the walls and floor, began to bulge.

Polished steel, the body was comprised of several 5-inch thick pieces, riveted together to house the electronics and fission reactors in the top and bottom ends. The center of the chamber was where the action would take place, it's face to the control room was the windowed access hatch. At that moment, an amazing show of convulsing and coalescing energy was taking place, sparks and arcs of manufactured cosmic power dancing into existence.

"If this thing goes," Straub cried, frantically trying to adjust the external controls. "It'll take out the whole building!"

 _"We hadn't tried to generate much, just a few molecules to test the theory. Now these few infinitesimal specks threatened to multiply into ounces, enough to wipe Maretropolis from the surface of the Earth. The military overseers had been worried about the dangers of trying to create_ _ **dark matter**_ _in a laboratory, and we had so arrogantly assured them of our safety. The future of space travel required a more capable fuel, and we had wanted to be the ones to create it."_

"Thomas look!"

 _"Stacey, beautiful as ever even when she's terrified, was pointing to a video feed of the rear entrance to the chamber room, replaying moments right after the fission reactors started to malfunction."_

"There was someone in the back." She said, stunned. "There was someone trying to sabotage the rear containment valve!"

 _"We had been warned about potential spies and agents of hostile governments attempting to interfere in the experiment, steal the research. But we never thought they'd resort to something like this. I watched the hooded figure do something out of sight, get real angry, then escape out of the back door."_

"The release is jammed…" Jacobs realized.

"I've cut off the power to the generators, but the process is already underway, unless we can get the rear valve working again, it'll push all excess energy to the forward hatch!"

 _"Straub was panicked, but his mind was used to that. His hands moved across the controls like a madman, only interrupted by brief seconds of him using his sleeve to wipe the sweat from his forehead."_

"Thomas…" While Jacobs was making his own adjustments to his side of the control panel, Stacey approached him, her hands shaking.

"Thomas, if we can't control the gestation… I just, I just wanted to tell you-"

"Tell me about it afterwards Stacey." He told her, turning to grab her by the shoulders and stare into her watering brown eyes. "Right now we have an explosion to prevent."

 _"No matter what we tried in the booth, nothing seemed to stabilize the metastasization of the dark matter. It was coming into being, and without the rear containment valve, the energy produced by its generation would be compressed until it blew the chamber. And us along with it._

 _With the seconds ticking by I realized the only way to fix the problem was to enter the chamber and manually open the rear valve."_

"Nothing else is working…" looking at the volatile generation chamber, Jacobs steeled his resolve. "I've got to go in."

"Are you out of your mind man!" Straub took the lapels of Thomas' lab coat by the fistful, pushing him against the wall. "The radiation will fry you!"

But Jacobs' fixed his friend with resigned calmness, laying his hands across Gary's forearms. "I'll wear the suit."

 _"We had been so eager. Far ahead of any time a testable engine could be built, we designed a suit for the pilot to wear. It would shield the wearer from any ambient radiation produced by the dark energy._

 _In short order I was dressed, Gary and Stacey helping me into the skin-tight body suit. It may have been immodest, and I may not have filled it out as well as I'd have liked, at least we had given it a stylish color scheme._

"Are you sure about this?"

 _"It wasn't lost on either one of us that this was the last time I might see her. In fact, even if were successful, I'd still be exposed to lethal dosages of radiation, which would claim me eventually._

 _But it had to be done."_

"It's either this, or something much worse." Thomas told her, pulling the mask up over his face, leaving only the mouth, eyes, and crown of his head uncovered. "So I'm about as sure of this as anything in my life."

"Then you'll need these." She said, holding a pair of protective goggles in her hands. "Gotta protect those steel-grays of yours."

 _"When she placed the goggles over my face, it was the last time her skin touched mine. I remember it being so warm and soft. Passion overcame me, and I pulled her in for a kiss._

 _Entering the chamber room was like stepping over an event horizon, the point of no return. The door locking behind me, I could feel the heat coming of the chamber, and I knew I was being inundated with radioactive particles. I might as well have put my head in a microwave and set it for 10 minutes on high._

 _Carrying the tool bag with me, I hurried to the rear of the chamber where, to my horror, saw that the control handle on the rear release valve had been welded in place. This was haw the saboteur had defeated the fail-safes. Whoever it was hadn't managed to tamper with the control handle on the emergency vent though, a pipe just above that would release the excess energy into the room instead of the containment cells. This was the way._

 _With no other choice, I opened the emergency vent._ "

"THOMAS WHAT ARE YOU DOING!"

 _"I heard Straub screaming, knowing full well the consequences of releasing the excess into the room. I had effectively just created a whole room of artificial cosmic energy, still horrible, but not as catastrophic as an explosion. I just had to hope the room's seal held out."_

"Oh my god…"

 _"Stacey was staring at data display, where we would find out if our dream had come true, to produce dark matter. She was fixated on it for some reason."_

"Thomas…" She called out, "The dark energy, it's… it's working!"

 _"Well, at least we had proven the science correct. Hopefully the next team to pick this up would all survive._

 _Since the damage had already been done I decided to see the process for myself. Kneeling down, I gazed into the hatch window, and watched our attempt to play god come to fruition."_

A series of flashes from the chamber caused a new surge of activity from the data controls.

Gary gasped, "It's not stopping! It's generating exponentially!"

 _"When I heard that, I realized the precious seconds that existed between the levels of disaster._

 _I opened the hatch, interrupting the process, and reached inside. The last thing I remember seeing before my world ceased to exist was the name of the project we had stenciled onto the hull. Our mission not for man to explore the stars at the speed of light, but, at the speed of darkness._

 _Project:_ _ **Shadowbolt**_ _."_

The laboratory was consumed in an instantaneous explosion, and so with it, the building.

* * *

 **WEEKS LATER**

 _"But death refused to claim me. By the time I woke up, I had not imagined the world I would come back to would be as dark as the particle I had once tried to father. Rising from the dirt, I looked around to see myself standing in a crater, knowing in my bones it was the epicenter of something terrible._

 _For a while I didn't even know my own name, I just knew it hurt to be in the light. So I was relegated to living in the darkened crevices of the city where I survived like an animal, scrounging for food, sheltering in shadows, and keeping away from people. In all that time, I watched. I observed how the underbelly of Maretropolis really turns, how the criminal and the abhorrent preyed on the innocent and the beautiful._

 _It wasn't until years later, when I overheard some mobsters talking about how they knew someone who knew something about what happened that night in the lab. By sheer chance, they had entered the same public bathroom I was in at the time to wash my face. With no way out before they came in and turned the lights back on, I ducked into one of the stalls and pulled my legs up. They went to the urinals and began chatting, the usual stuff about how they had strong-armed honest people, which cop they had paid off this week, how much they made by turning teenagers into addicts. I had grown so jaded by then, I just didn't care."_

"You hear about that kid? The one from the west end boys?" One of the men in cheap suits asked, tilting his head laterally. "Heard he got roughed-up pretty good by some Ponezetti crew."

"Oh yeah.. He-he.. Always running his mouth." His partner chuckled. "That kid never does know when to take no for an answer. You hear he started bragging about that uh… Cornet Labs accident?"

 _"The mention of the lab brought back a flood of memories all at once. It was almost too much to handle, but I was able to remember, remember what happened that night."_

Zipping up their pants, one of the men shook his head. "Saying he was behind it. Now why would anyone wanna brag about that? No money in blowing up labs."

 _"What happened once my mind calmed isn't exactly clear. I just remember the rage. The stall door was kicked off its hinges, I grabbed it and hurled it like a spear at one of them. I think I heard his ribs shatter, I'm not sure._

 _When the other one pulled his gun out of his jacket, I moved, then my hands were around his throat, then I… I…"_

* * *

 **NOW**

"Dominick Stallionato, you tried to kill me."

"The hell are you talking about!" The old man growled, feeling the uneven surface of his SUVs underbelly dig into his shoulders. "I ain't never _tried_ to kill anybody, I got it done."

"One of your lackeys." His grip tightening, twisting the aged mobster's lapel, Shadowbolt bared his teeth. "You gave one of your miserable underlings the order to sabotage Cornet Labs. Your man, your order, your hand at work. What was his name?"

Genuinely perplexed, Stallionato returned the sneer and shook his head. "Kid, I don't know what you heard, or what lies you been sold, but I ain't never given anybody such a stupid order, as blowing-up some science lab!"

"YOU'RE LYNG!" Shadowbolt raged, lifting Dominick off his feet. "Tell me his name or I'll pop your head off like a dandelion!"

Through the fog of anxiety and indignant anger, A thought cut its way through the years of Dominick's faded memories, one recalled by the accusation.

"Wait… There was a rumor floating round, about some kid in my turf, but he was full of shit, nobody ever believed him."

Lowering the Don to put their eyes on an equal plane, Shadowbolt asked one last time in a voice that could chill the devil.

"What, was his name?"

"Shadowbolt!" Standing behind them both, Mane-iac poised herself, ready for anything.

"Put him down!" She commanded. "You're coming with me!"

Before he could respond, Police sirens and squealing tires came around the block. The window for answers was closing, and Shadowbolt knew it.

"The lady…" Stallionato whispered, "Or the tiger?"

Shadowbolt turned his head to Mane-iac, growling in frustration.

"I'm not finished with you." He told Dominick.

Throwing the old man over his shoulder, Shadowbolt darted out from between the two sides, heading into a row of quiet industrial buildings. Just as fast, Mane-iac was after him.

Encumbered by the weight, he wasn't as fast as he usually was, but he was still able to keep pace ahead of her.

 _"Oh no you don't!"_ Throwing tendrils of hair up around streetlights, Mane-iac slung herself forward, arms outstretched. But he maneuvered out of the way just in time, dodging her by inches.

The chase continued, even as it left the street when he leaped from the top of a car, onto a low roof, and into the window of an adjacent manufacturing plant. Entering the room, he immediately saw the tall metal cabinet next to the window. With one arm he reached back and yanked it off-kilter to block the way.

"Damn!" Making the split decision, Mane-iac opted to head higher.

Coming to a stop on a catwalk above the plant floor, overlooking a number of machines and stacks of crates, Shadowbolt took Stallionato and put his back against the railing.

"His name! Who sabotaged the lab!"

"Go to hell." Dominick said, sticking his chin out in a final act of defiant courage.

Pulling his arm back to deliver a punch to the old man's ribs, the sound of scampering from above distracted Shadowbolt.

Taking his chance, Stallionato gripped he combat knife stuck in his belt line, drew it out, and stabbed it into Shadowbolt's left breast to the hilt.

"AHH!" Seeing the handle sticking out of his chest, the flash of anger blinded his senses. Shadowbolt drove his fist into Dominick Stallionato's sternum, crushing his ribcage like an empty eggshell. The dying mobster coughed-up a spray of blood onto his killer's face, collapsing.

"Noooooo!" His best chance to find out who had destroyed the lab taking his knowledge to the grave with him, Shadowbolt cursed himself. He pulled the knife from his flesh and threw it away with such force it was embedded in the concrete wall.

Mane-iac dropped down from above, aghast to see what he had done.

"I don't care what your cause is, Thomas Jacobs, that's the last man you kill."

Facing the one who had interrupted him just when he was about to get the name, who now set herself to deny him his revenge, Shadowbolt turned on her with a cold fury.

"I've still got one or two left in me."

She was ready when he charged, ducking around his lunging fist and coming back with a left hook to the inside of his knee, followed by a right into his solar plexus. He buckled, but it wasn't enough to throw him off.

He grabbed one of the tails of her scarf, using it to drag her to the side and against the railing. With her back against the bar, he seized her throat in his hand, pressing forward, trying to bend her whole body.

"I told you to stay out of this!" Shadowbolt growled, her hands grabbing onto his arms. "I told you to walk away!"

Staring back into his face, Mica could almost see the eyes behind the goggles. "Like hell!" She choked out.

Purple tendrils wrapped around Shadowbolt's ankles, and pulled upwards, heaving both of them over the railing and out of sight.

Close by, A man sitting in shadows watched the fight play on one of several monitors surrounding him. He watched the pair tumble over the handrail with a light gasp of fascination. The shine of the screen's light reflecting in a stripe across the lenses of his glasses.

Mane-iac and Shadowbolt crashed onto the barren concrete floor, she saving them both from injury by taking the brunt of the impact with a curved construct of her hair. They rolled to the side, still gripping one another like animals locked in combat for survival. As he reasserted his grip around her throat, she reached over and drove the palm of her hand into his jaw repeatedly. She knew it wouldn't be enough to seriously harm him, but it was a sufficient tactic to keep him distracted from the tendril of hair creeping behind his back.

The vine wrapped itself around Shadowbolt's neck, a sister around his left shoulder, and both worked in tandem to pry him off and fling him into a steel support beam for the catwalk above. He hit the strut hard enough to curve the metal, a grunt of pain escaping him. Mane-iac shot to her feet, rushing over to hopefully incapacitate him at the first opportunity. She leaped forward, aiming a boot for his chin, but he saw the blow coming in time and ducked to the side.

She struck the beam, and for a split second her momentum allowed her to stand on the vertical surface. It was enough time for Shadowbolt to counter attack. He seized the leg, placing the back of her shin on his shoulder, and yanked her to the ground. Immediate he swung her in a tight arc, warping her right side around the beam, shattering one of her ribs.

"Ahh!" The sharp stab of pain shooting across her midsection became her whole world, the fact that her impact-dulling armor had prevented much worse damage was something she was too preoccupied to be thankful for.

Not finished, Shadowbolt grabbed her arm, and with both limbs tossed her into the painted cinderblock wall. Mane-iac hit the bricks with a thud, face clenched as she started to slide down. At the sound of his footsteps, she reflexively lashed out with angry, snapping strands, aiming just to keep him at bay for a few moments longer.

The tactic worked, and by the time he managed to weave his way through the tendrils of hair that jabbed and beat, she was ready. When he went to land a punch, she caught the arm in a standing scarf hold and leveraged him against the wall with a pivot of her legs. Mane-iac put a knee into up into his lower ribcage, trying her damdest to snap one of his ribs in turn. She fed two into his side before she felt something give way, and put in a third to the liver for good measure.

Shadowbolt muscled free of her hold, pushing her face away with the edge of his hand against her nose. She knocked it away, and teed off with a series of rights and lefts to his jaw, throat, breadbox, and cheeks. He tried to counter, but she easily deflected his wild swing, and laid another salvo into his head, finishing it with an elbow across the mandible. He staggered, coughing up a gob of blood that splattered on the floor.

Teeth grinding and battle fury coursing through her veins, Mane-iac didn't see a chance for de-escalation, rather she saw an opportunity to deliver a finishing blow. She threw her head back, then whipped it forward, morphing her hair into a battering ram. The blunt end of the purple instrument struck Shadowbolt in the chest, and hammered him through the wall in a burst of concrete bits and dust.

The room on the other side was filled with abandoned construction equipment and material, the result of a retrofitting attempt the previous year. Long settled dust and cobwebs were pitched into chaos when Shadowbolt came crashing into the room and demolished a stack of cinderblocks.

Mae-iac stepped through the rough opened they'd created, casting her hat aside, focused solely on rendering her foe a sack of disjointed bones and organs. She grasped a handful of his hair to drag his face up, drawing her leg back for another knee strike. But he gripped her arm, and propelled himself upwards at an angle to smash the crown of his skull into her nose and top row of teeth. A gush of crimson and cry of agony was the sign of his success as she stumbled back, eyes watering and world spinning.

Shadowbolt managed to get a hold of a tendril of flailing hair, and he yanked on it, pulling her directly into his lunging fist. The knuckles buried themselves into her gut, doubling her over before he slipped his arm around her neck. He squeezed her in the front face-lock like an orange, lifting her off her feet until she was almost upside-down. Purple hair became an angry kraken, lashing out at anything within reach, striking bricks into a million pieces.

A path of clarity broke through her fury, hundreds of hours of training snapping back to the fore. Mane-iac dug her hands into her belt, slotting her fingers into the knuckle dusters. Now sporting a bit more armament, and none too soon as the choke hold on her throat threatened had cut off her breath. Mica regained control of her wild hair, sending it to coil itself around Shadowbolt's face. He simply couldn't maintain his grip as his neck was bent backwards, and released her.

Mane-iac fell to the debris covered floor, sucking in lung-fulls of glorious oxygen. For a split second it reminded her of some deep-water diving she had done, training her lungs to stay down longer and longer before needing to surface. Sometimes preparation came in handy in the oddest places.

Shadowbolt continued to wrestle with her super-strands, experimental science giving his muscles the ability to pry them off. He spun in place to undo the coil, taking the length of it in both hands, fighting it for dominance. Mane-iac lunged through the midst's of her hair, knuckle dusters leading the way. At the last moment, Shadowbolt turned his back to her, dragging the length of her locks with him, taking her off balance and careening into a rusty wheelbarrow. Mica and the cart toppled over one another, loudly, colliding into several upright wooden planks.

In the mess, the weapon on her right hand was jostled off. She tried to get her feet under herself as quickly as possible, but a boot to the ear put her back down. Insensible, Mica once more struggled to stand, reaching out and finding something to grab with her left hand, Shadowbolt. He grabbed the hand, holding it in place, and brought down a hammer fist over the knuckles, using the metal bracers to break two of her phalanges.

"AHHH-HUUUUUH!" She shrieked, curling her body into a fetal position to protect her injured appendage. What Shadowbolt didn't see as he huffed for breath, was the smoke pellet she was removing from her belt. In the blink of an eye, she struck her hand out and smashed the orb on the floor, releasing the contents to expand and fill the space with a choking grey fume.

The sudden shroud forced Shadowbolt back, covering his mouth and teetering away to find clear air. Seconds passed as he coughed and spat out the chemical residue, the finer material of the smoke bomb leaving a thin layer over the lenses of his goggles. He had a lot of difficulty defending himself when Mane-iac emerged from the mist with her collapsible baton raised. She kicked half a red brick to initiate a distraction, it shot up and hit him leg, causing him to lean down reflexively.

She swung for the exposed area on the back of his skull, just grazing the top of his crown when he reacted. Nonetheless, the glancing blow torn his skin, lacerating three inches of the uncovered portion of his head. Mica's training took over her attack, striking next with a back blow as he stood erect to avoid a direct impact to the face. Her footwork danced through the assault, one leg spinning around for a roundhouse that was battered away with a forearm, only for Mane-iac to use her hair as a backstop, and suspend her at an angle.

The technique caught him by surprise, and she capitalized, drilling a dropkick into his chest that projected him into a partially demolished section of concrete wall. Shadowbolt's hand caught a length of rebar sticking out from the jagged masonry, tearing out a two-foot branch of metal. Mica was again pressing the advantage, this time her baton was met by the steel rod as he rose to his feet, the impact of the two colliding enough that blood from his head wound and her broken face were pitched forward, coating both weapons in droplets.

"What happened to you Thomas?" Mane-iac asked him face to face. From behind re-enforced safety glass and custom-weave mesh, their eyes locked on each other. "What turns a man like you into a murderer!?"

"Thomas Jacobs died saving Manehattan, the price of trying to play god!" Shadowbolt curled his lip back, blood staining his bared teeth. A flash of memory over what happened in the lab that night almost enough to bring him to tears. " **NOW THERE'S JUST ME!"**

With a shoved he pushed her away, putting a few steps between them. Maybe it was the battle-lust, maybe it was the pain wracking her body, but it was only now Mica took stock of the wall on the right side of the room, the one with more than a few good cracks in it below the window to the outside.

Shadowbolt swung, the length of the rebar forcing her to sidestep and guide it away with her shorter baton. She used her weapon to maneuver his, leading it in a loop that allowed her to step around his side in twirl. He stumbled, giving her a precious second to reach the transmitter on her belt. Mica's fingers were still throbbing and refusing fine dexterity, so she jammed the knuckle of her pinkie finger on the little button. Now she had had to make sure he would stay put.

Though her left hand was only partially functional, it could still grip. As Shadowbolt again swiped his rebar, she lured his attack in before tossing her baton from her right into the left. Her counter was a combination, edging her good hand along his arm, redirecting his momentum as she drove the butt of her nightstick into his shoulder blade and pushing him.

Mane-iac knew she would only have one shot at this, so in spite of the pain and adrenaline, she bent her mind to focus. She drew her blowpipe from its sheath on her belt, a tranquilizer dart preloaded as it always was. The pipe was already in her lips, a breath being funneled through it when Shadowbolt turned around. The dart's aim was true, puncturing his skin in the small sliver of space between his mouth and the side of the mask. Mica didn't want to chance that the suit was able to protect him, so she aimed for exposed skin.

He recoiled and raged, swatting the barb out of his skin. In truth she didn't know how effective the dosage would be, no telling what kind of factors at play that might diminish the effects or even render him immune. But she didn't need it to knock him out, she just needed him slowed down. Whatever was in his system, she couldn't let him burn off.

So she moved in close, raising her baton in challenge. Shadowbolt brought his rebar down, intent to break her weapon in half. The two rods skimmed one another, Mica allowing the force of his blow be directed to the side. That was when she reached up and wrapped her fingers around his jaw, shoving his head back. She powered her legs forward, at the same time interlocking her left arm around his right. She just needed to keep him in place.

Out of the corner of her eye, she spied the window, and the growing light from the other side.

Shadowbolt brought his free arm in a haymaker arc, laying the palm of his hand upside her face, crushing her ear and rattling her balance. The blow legitimately disoriented her, knees losing their resolve, equilibrium no longer under her control. Any other time she might think herself vulnerable, even worried about being in such a defenseless state. But not this time.

Sensing an imminent victory, Shadowbolt grabbed a length of her hair peeling it back until he could stare down at her face.

"Sorry…" Mica muttered. "But I gotta go."

"What?" The confusion was apparent on Shadowbolt's face behind the mask and goggles. She took a small joy in his reaction.

A bright light from the outside beamed through the small window, drawing Shadowbolt's attention, the roar of the engine rapidly approaching.

"My ride's here."

The Black Beauty smashed through the wall, high-beams bathing him head to toe. He covered his face in the half-a-heartbeat, it was all he could do as his enhanced reflexes were retarded by the light particles. Robbed of the ability to dodge the impact, the vehicle's grill plowed into his body, sweeping him away as he was bent over the hood. The car had come within inches of

Mane-iac's nose. They struck the wall on the opposite side and into a larger space.

Three walls of the room demolished, Mica wondered if the ceiling would not collapse as she knelt in place. Using her sleeve to wipe off a trickle of blood off her face, she agonizingly rose to her feet, having to create a third leg with her hair to keep her from sprawling. She ambled to next room, stooping down with a pained groan to pick-up her hat, flopping it onto her crown without ceremony. The loose knuckleduster was also recovered, placing the pair of them and the blowpipe in their respective compartments. Mica retained the nightstick in her functional hand.

"Give me Matter-Horn any day…" She grumbled.

Stepping through the jagged entrance, she saw that Black Beauty had come to a stop, engine idling as its receiver transponder told it that it had reached its destination. The room itself was huge, another storage hanger filled with stacks of grime layered cargo crates, shipping conexs, and other objects under large plastic sheets. As Mane-iac rounded the side of her car, she placed a hand on the roof, leaning on it to give her excruciating ribs a break.

Shadowbolt's arm slapped down on the floor, entering her vision from beyond the car's bumper, clawing like a zombie from the grave.

"Oh for the love of Faust…" Mica dropped her head to the roof in frustration. Her laborious task before her, she tightened her fingers on the baton. He pulled himself across the floor, a slimy tendon of lifeblood and mucus extending from his mouth. His left goggle was shattered, the right a crack down the center. The sound of her footstep caused his head to turn in her direction with a slight wobble. He emitted a guttural cough in spite of his apparent defeat.

Mica raised the baton shakily over her head, glad to finally end this feud.

The overhead lights in the room directly above her illuminated before the blow could fall, leaving her too stunned to do anything else but stand in confused silence. Shadowbolt surrendered one final grunt and lost consciousness.

"Absolutely incredible!" Came a voice not far away. "Such brutality!"

The sound of several guns being cocked snapped Mane-iac to look around, armed men emerging from the stacks and rows, automatic weapons leveled in her direction.

"I'm sure your strange friend from Christmas would have loved a chance to join in the activities!"

The voice was coming from somewhere above her. But as she scanned what she now saw were a network of catwalks crisscrossing the second tier of the room, something else dawned on her.

" _I know that voice! It's the man from the tablet! The one who was orchestrating the robberies and trying to broker a deal with the mobs!"_

"Who are you?!" She called out, posturing to defend herself from the thugs who continued to tighten the circle. "What do you want?"

"Like I said before, all I want is a little recognition." Noises on the walkway indicated someone moving into position. "By the way, each of my men are equipped with armor-piercing rounds. I admit I'm unsure if your hair can protect you from them, but I am very curious to find out should the need arise."

Mica regarded the men warily, considering if any of them looked like they had an itchy trigger finger.

"Regrettably, I, am a nobody."

Something fell from the scaffolding above and landed atop one of the taller objects just outside the illuminated area. Instead of landing on it with a thud, the top of the dark monument pressed down.

A cloud of vapor was projected from the mysterious aperture, covering Mane-iac. She reflexively reached to pull her scarf over her mouth and nose, but found her movement arrested as soon has her fingers pinched the cloth. Her whole body became frozen in place, as immobile as a statue, every strand of hair suspended.

Whoever it was that had leapt from above made their way to the floor, working from one surface to another. Mica could still see the movement out of the corner of her eye, the figure reaching the ground and standing calmly in the shadows.

"You see Mane-iac, I tried to be somebody, somebody great, somebody like you."

Mica thought it might be an effect of whatever gas she had been dosed with, or just a product of straining her vision to get a better look at him, but she could swear that something was very odd about her captor.

"Well, not quite like you." He continued. "I tried to be like the Malice -Mares."

" _The Malice-Mares are involved in this somehow? Why am I not surprised."_

"But I'm just a man you know. I don't have any superpowers, I didn't have any fancy gadgets, nothing. Just plain old me. Oh sure I have an intellect worthy of historical record, but they didn't care, they just wanted power. No matter how I appealed to them, they rejected me, scorned me.

You know what they called me? Hmm? They called me useless, they called me dull…"

Sharp footsteps came around from Mica's side, and came to stand within arm's reach in front of her. He was not what she expected.

"They said I was… 'Humdrum'."

Glaring up at Mane-iac, was a diminutive man, no taller than five-feet, avocado green skin, and light brown hair. He was dressed in clean black slacks and a pristine white suit jacket over a grey shirt. Glasses so thick they could be used for a telescope distorted his eyes, making the roan irises pop out at you.

"Can you believe that?" He spat, anger and heartache setting the muscles in his face to twitch. "Humdrum! Me!"

 _"Oh my god…. I know this guy! Horace Billetino, black sheep and general embarrassment of the extended Stallionato family. The product of the questionable breeding of a bottom-feeding soldier. Despite his dwarfism, he tried to use his brain to rise through the ranks of the family. But the idea of him being anywhere near the actual movers and shakers got quashed at every turn. Bad optics for the prestige of the organization._

 _Even with his shortcomings, he's managed to garner a reputation all his own. Years of ridicule and exclusion gave him a nasty temper and a cruel streak you could race cars on. The nickname they gave him wasn't one he enjoyed, in fact, mentioning it was known to set him off. I suppose I would too, if my nickname was 'the baby dragon'."_

From out of her vision, Shadowbolt moaned. " _He must be coming around, but the light is too much for him!"_

"Ah… And our volatile friend here. In possession of great power, that should have BEEN MINE!"

The pint-sized fiend turned his back to her, clasping his hands behind.

"I have no-one with whom I can relate, Mane-iac, do you mind if I share a little story with you? You aren't going anywhere are you?"

A small chuckle preceded a sigh.

"Since the Malice-Mares would not have me for lack of powers, I decided that I would simply acquire them. Industrial accidents, I find, have a surprisingly high rate of turning the average person into something more."

He turned to Mica with a sly grin. "As I surmise you are familiar with. But…" Raising a finger, Horace pressed another hand to his chest for a dramatic pause. "It just so happened, that I was able to learn about a nearby facility hosting a new energy project. It was a simply matter of bribery to learn more about what they were doing. You'd be surprised how talkative a security guard can be when you put a suitcase of money and a gun in front of him, and ask him to pick one."

"So I set about to expose myself to the powers generate by the dark matter experiment. Either I would die a death unlike any other in the history of the world, or I would be transformed. Hopefully, into something great. Then the Malice-Mares could no longer dismiss mundane little me."

He turned his heel on a dime and strode over to the fallen Shadowbolt, looming over him, his lips twitching, hands tightening behind his back.

"I made sure the chamber would vent the cosmic radiation, so that I could soak it in, every cell, every molecule and atom of my being transformed by it. But there was a complication I failed to foresee. You see…"

Billetino twisted his neck, remembering his disaster. "I was too short to reach the control handle, too short to reach my destiny."

He held his hand in front of himself, examining it, and clenching it into a fist.

"Then he stole it from me. Took the power that should have been mine. And what has he done with it?"

He scowled, and in a flash, kicked Shadowbolt in the ribs. "Huh! Live in the gutter!" Another kick. "Waste his time with common street scum!" Another kick. "Treat his incredible gift like a curse!"

The flare of wrath sated, he stepped back, hyperventilating breath slowing down until it whistled softly through his teeth.

But… If I can't have amazing power, I can take it away from those who do."

Mica strained to move, whatever the spray was still held her immobile. She could though, feel its potency slipping when her mouth could move ever so slightly.

" _Just a little more!…. Come on!"_

"I was experimenting with some kind of chemical enhancement, when I stumbled upon this peculiar formula."

Extracting a remote control from his jacket, the Horace pressed a button. The room responded, reams of lights flickering on throughout the breadth of the increasingly revealed space. In front of Mane-iac, where the little man had released the paralyzing mist, now stood what appeared to be a giant aerosol can.

"I call it the 'Hairspray Ray of Doom!', for now at least. Capable of rendering even the greatest superheroes-"

He strode over, bending over to smile smugly a few inches from her.

"-or heroines, completely powerless. Just like me."

Albeit hidden behind her mask, Mica glared at him. "Youu.. Wonnn't… get away.."

Before she could finish her sentence, he moved in uncomfortably close to her, inspecting her face like a scientist would a newly discovered insect species.

"Huh… It seems the formula requires some modification."

Billetino gestured casually to one of his men, waving towards the oversized hairspray container.

"If you would be so kind."

"You got it boss." The unnamed henchman slung his automatic over his shoulder, secured a ladder resting against one of the high shelves, and swung it over onto the aerosol canister. Ascending it, he pressed the top down, once more releasing a jet of the lavender chemical compound that the small man made sure to step aside from.

Mane-iac felt her features harden once more, and would have cursed if she had the ability.

" _When I get my hands on this grubby little creep!"_

"For my safety and yours, I'll just take this for now." Horace fumbled his fingers around the buckle of Mane-iac's belt, and after a few grunts of frustration, found the release.

"Wouldn't want you playing with any of your toys now would I? And what's this?" He tossed the belt aside and grabbed her by the left arm, wrenching it down for him to get a closer look at the slight but noticeable pad on the inside of her forearm. Mica had already skated by on one stroke of good fortune, and as she watched the strange little man fiddle with her wrist panel, she really hoped fate could spare her one more tonight.

 _"Oh please, oh please let him be stupid enough, please let him press the right button!"_

"Interesting device you have here." He complimented, running his gaze over the array of features. Circuitry embedded into the fabric displayed a series of small inlaid buttons.

"I wonder what these do…"

The more he stared at them, the harder Mica screamed in her mind for him to press the one closest to her elbow. His fingers wiggled, hovering above the slim device like someone tantalized.

 _"Come on!"_

But he retracted his arms and seemed to lose interest for a moment. "Tell me Mane-iac, does one of these blow something up?"

 _"Press it and find out!"_

"Perhaps we'll find out later." Billetino snapped his fingers, two of the men responding to the summons.

"Take the lady to my lab, I've got a few tests I'd like to run."

One of the men paused to stare and point his thumb at the still comatose body of Shadowbolt. "Uh, Boss, what about this one?"

"Leave him, he's not going anywhere in his condition." The dwarf in charge ordered, beginning to walk away.

"Whatevah' you say Boss." One of the men went and took Mane-iac's asymmetrical mass of hair in both hands, leaning her forward as if they were about to move a couch. The other, decided to hold onto her by the arms.

Horace stopped in place, "Oh, and be careful not to-"

As soon as the thug's hands wrapped around her forearm, he felt the slim button depress.

The lights throughout the entire complex died, leaving them all in darkness that was only pierced by the faint moonlight streaming in from the various windows along the higher levels of the walls.

"…. Oh dear god." The small man muttered to himself, his crew asking among themselves what could have happened. As fast as his trembling little hands could move, he took a penlight out of his pocket. He shone it in his immediate area. "Of all the bumbling idiots in Maretropolis to hire!"

His light swept over to Mane-iac, who remained statuesque in between the perplexed goons. Then, carefully so as not to miss anything, he moved his light over to where Shadowbolt had been laying, a silent prayer on his lips. When the spot was illuminated, there was nothing to be found but a small puddle of blood and a number of red smears.

The gulp in his throat was audible. Slowly, he started to back away. A sound, a terrible crunching sound, froze him in place temporarily. He listened intently for anything else but nothing came. The urge to flight compelled him once more to chance a stealthy escape. Memory of how things were positioned in the room might have saved him some trouble, but a pervasive fear dampened his better senses. His leg collided into the corner of a wooden crate, making a very loud, very attention-grabbing noise.

Small man clasped a hand over his mouth to keep himself from yelping, biting the flesh of his palm.

A skittering clatter came closer and closer to him, until he felt something bump against the heel of his shoe. Mouth still covered, he pointed his light down, and saw one of his men's rifles laying there.

"Hang on, hang on." Someone complained. "I got a light." Elsewhere in the room, another goon thumped his own flashlight against his hand, the light flickering. A steady connection was finally made, and the beam filled out. The first thing he saw when he pointed the light ahead of him, was the bloodied, snarling face of Shadowbolt. A scream, and the struggle was over.

"Hey!" One man called out, feeling his way along a row of covered boxes. He carried a shotgun, the upper and lower receivers shaking. "Anybody there?"

The two men who had been about to move Mane-iac stayed put, huddling close to her as if proximity to her offered some kind of safety. Two loud shots went off somewhere in the room, followed by a cry of pain that was cut short.

"What do we do?" one of them asked the other.

"I don't know!" His partner said.

Mica flexed her hand, then balled it up. A thought flashed into her mind about how the spray worked, but she put it aside for the time being. Though the room was nearly pitch black, her double irises could still see far better than any of the criminal hirelings. Straining her muscles and willpower, she felt the rigidity of the chemical's hold on her break apart.

When her body and hair broke free, the effort of having to keep herself upright despite the still-throbbing injuries sent her sprawling belly-first to the floor. The men reacted with surprise, both of them turning to stare at what they could barely see was empty space. Taking the advantage, Mica wrapped her coils around the legs of the man behind her, and yanked them out from under him. Simultaneously, she smashed her baton into the knee of the one who had grabbed onto her arms, deriving a surprisingly high-pitched cry of agony from him.

Swinging her coils, she sent the first man sailing into the body of the massive canister, the blow to the back of his head knocking him out. The second man fell to his side, clutching his folded leg. Mane-iac sprang forward on all fours to bring her nightstick across his cheek, putting a short-term end to his suffering. Her immediate problems solved, she took a few hard breaths before climbing back to her feet.

She was buckling her belt back around her waist when something in the shadows moved. It was barely above a whisper, but she heard the sound of someone stepping very lightly. It was too soft a patter to be the dense Shadowbolt, and she grit her teeth in conclusion.

 _"I probably should be going after Shadowbolt right now… but I really don't like this guy."_

Without warning a burst of gunfire tore through the aisles, forcing her to dash for cover behind a low section of shelving occupied by crates she hoped were filled with things heavy and solid. The shots continued for another three seconds until the unmistakable smack of fist on flesh put an end to it.

 _"I don't know how he can keep going like this, but he sure is handy in a pinch."_

A exit on the far end of the room swung open, the door clanging against the wall with a bang. Mica rushed to pursue as best she could, but when she took a few steps and reached her hand out for support, she touched the cylindrical body of the Hairspray Ray of Doom. She hesitated as an idea took shape.

Shadowbolt too was alerted by the loud escape, letting go of the guy he was holding up by the collar of his shirt, staring over to where the clamor had come from. Years of pent-up revenge welled within him, knowing he had found his quarry at long last. While he may have been incapacitated during the man's egotistical monologue, he heard everything.

The small man ran out into the industrial yard, perspiration beginning to drench his hair, his heart ready to erupt through his sternum. He sprinted on his little legs over the dirt and patches of loose gravel, towards his car parked just at the edge of the road that ran split down the middle. It wasn't a flashy car, or even a pretty nice car by any means. Like him it was small, remarkable only in its banal, aged red paint job, and being a sedan that should have been consigned to the junkyard two decades ago.

Dawn was rising, its fingers reaching across the yard. A cloud of exhalation trailed him like smoke from a coal-powered locomotive as he made his way. His foot slipped on a rock, and he belly-flopped into the ground. "HUFF!" Something in his chest felt wrong, and when he tried to push himself up, he found breathing had become difficult.

The crunch of gravel behind him put a whole new sinking feeling in his heart. Horace spun onto his back, and saw Shadowbolt stalking him, the glimmer of the sun reflecting off his broken goggles. A light snow had begun to descend on Maretropolis, tiny flakes of frost sticking out against the dried blood it settled on. Horace could only stare up at him in terror, a hard wheeze from his lungs increasing in pace.

"Gary Straub." Shadowbolt said, a piece of glass falling out of the goggle's left lens.

"Thomas Jacobs." He took a step forward.

"Stacey Meriwether." Shadowbolt's expression darkened to a degree, the small man thought he might turn into an actual shadow. Then he reached down to take his target by the ankle.

"Don't kill him!"

Holding the Hairspray Ray of Doom in the coils of her hair, Mane-iac hugged an elbow to the left side of her torso. Instead of a an accusing finger or a challenging fist, instead she held out her hand, trying to reach out to him.

"He'll answer for his crimes! Everyone will know what he's done!"

Shadowbolt looked to her, then glanced to the squirming Billetino in his grasp. "Yeah… in the obituaries."

"You said Thomas Jacobs died saving Maretropolis!" Mica said, calming her voice. "I don't believe you when you say there's nothing left of him in you, I don't think a hero died that night."

 _"I didn't know if I believed the words coming out of my mouth, but there had to be something left of a good man in that suit. Otherwise, why would he be so enraged by the injustice of corruption? Of perversion? Preying on the innocent?_

 _I'm not sure why I didn't just freeze them both right there. Maybe I was just in the moment, maybe I wanted him to choose the right path, instead of me choosing it for him."_

Shadowbolt's eye twitched, a frustrated snort as he processed what she had said. Part of him wanted to tear the little man apart, another part, albeit one with a lower volume, told him to stop this madness.

"Thomas died… and I… don't know what came back."

"I can help you Shadowbolt, help you understand what happened to you. But it starts with putting him down. If you stay on this path of violence, it'll destroy whatever's left of the hero inside you. And it'll leave only a monster in its place."

 _"I seemed to be getting through to him. His arm began to lower."_

"What if I am a monster?" Shadowbolt's free hand tightened. "What if there's nothing left to be helped?"

"I think that's up to you. Do you want to be a man? Or do you want to be a monster?"

Billetino was hauled up, his breath sounding like a struggling asthmatic, waiting with spellbound dread for a single blow to end his life. Shadowbolt stared hard into his eyes, lips pinched, a deep-throated growl building.

With a swing of his arm, Shadowbolt tossed Horace into the door of his car. "WHAAA-GHUK!" The baby dragon smacked off the metal, falling into his face. Dislodged by the hit, the lock came apart and the door drifted open with a creak.

Shadowbolt stood in place, his head tilted down in contemplation. "Whatever I am, Mane-iac, I know I'm done spilling blood on account of that little bastard."

Mane-iac eased the pressure on the head of the can, setting the whole thing down as a show of trust.

"You know I gotta take you off the streets now." She told him.

"Yeah, I figured." As he faced her, she could see the part of his eye revealed by the missing part of the lens.

 _"I don't quite know how I could describe what I saw. I think it must be like what astronomers think the event horizon of a black hole must look like."_

"Whoa."

"You think the police will know what to do with him?" Shadowbolt asked. "Maybe they have a dog cage they can keep him in."

"I have friends on the force, plus, I'm sure the police would be more than happy to get a pair of cuffs on the notorious "baby dragon" of the Stallionato family."

Just as Mane-iac took a step, looking to where Billetino had been crumpled, she now realized that he was pointing a pistol directly at her.

"I don't… like that name!" Horace spat, leaning back on an elbow. A trail of blood coming from his nose, glasses bent. Right behind him, the open driver's side door.

 _"He must have grabbed it while we were talking, had it tucked in beside the seat. The weapon looked like a custom job, large caliber, frame built to accommodate his small hands. Had to assume it was packed with the same armor-piercing rounds he gave his men. I don't think my hair or my suit would stop the bullet."_

"Is your suit bulletproof?" Shadowbolt muttered to her out the side of his mouth.

"No, is yours?"

"No."

 _"Billetino was nervous, I could tell by the way the muzzle wobbled, that and he was clearly suffering some kind of internal injury and the blow to the head. A steady shot is always preferable to a shaky one, easier to gauge, to counter. You get one who can't keep his hand still, that bullet is on a hair trigger, gotta be careful not to startle-"_

Shadowbolt took a sudden side step, placing his body between Mane-iac and Billetino. The shot was instantaneous, Horace recoiling like a scared cat from the movement, his finger tightening around the trigger. Before he even realized it, the bullet was already gone. It struck Shadowbolt in the upper left of his chest, throwing him into a spiraling pitch to the ground.

Billetino stared in shock at what he had done, jaw hanging slack, the gun going limp in his hand.

 _"In the moment, I was more bewildered than worried, and the time it took for him to go down seemed to pass in slow motion."_

"SHADOWBOLT!" Mane-iac started to kneel, but instead, she made her way to the still stunned diminutive gangster. He was transfixed, not batting an eye when she reached his side. Very carefully, she took the gun from him with as much ease as if it had been dangling from a hook, unloaded the magazine, and operated the slide to eject the next chambered round.

"I've never shot anybody before…" He said in his daze. "never… killed."

"For what it's worth, I'm not sure he can be."

Horace Billetino blearily craned his neck to the side, gazing up to her like a frightened child.

"So what happens now?"

"Now…" Mica dropped the gun and pulled back her right arm. "I knock you out."

He made no effort to avoid the punch, and his last conscious image was the darkened crevices of her fist.

* * *

 **TWO DAYS LATER**

"…The first officer on the scene, Detective Steven Langoud, described what he saw."

"It was the craziest crap I ever seen in my life! I-i-i-it was like the set of some action flick, buildings busted up, bodies all over the place. Mane-iac and Shadowbolt musta went through hell fighting all them guys."

 _"I admit, part of me just couldn't help myself."_

Sitting in the firelight of her polished den, a recovering Mica Hackett held her cup of coffee with both hands, sitting cross-legged on her couch, nestled in her fuzzy robe. She took a sip and cocked her eyes up to the television screen, where the comically befuddled Maretropolis detective played the fool in the footage shot the other night.

"It's a good thing someone like the Mane-iac was there, otherwise things could have been a lot worse."

 _"I always got a kick whenever he had to play dumb. He may not be a singer, but damn if he doesn't deserve an award for that act of his."_

In the parking garage of the Maretropolis 46th police precinct, Langoud tossed the crinkled paper bag of leftover pastries into the passenger seat of his Coltler Manehattan. Sliding into the seat with an audible degree of effort, he shut the door, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and leaned his neck back.

"Another day, another stale doughnut."

He chanced a sidelong glance into his rearview mirror, and was surprised to see a bright purple ribbon shining in the back seat. Langoud twisted around, and found himself looking at a box for a brand-new coffee machine, an expensive looking one at that. Taped to the side, a bag of Prench Vanilla coffee, his favorite.

Steven smiled. "I knew she liked me."

* * *

Mica's phone buzzed, she picked it up in a tendril to see a new message from Gigan. 'Wish you were here!' the text said, accompanied by a picture of him wearing a Metallicolt shirt, and posing with the lead singer, James Hoofield. They were both giving the camera the two-fingered rock-on gesture with outstretched tongues. Mica rolled her eyes with a grin. Then another message appeared; 'So who's this Shadowbolt guy?'.

" _Hmm, I'll text him back later."._

The graphic behind the news women changed, now showing the picture of Horace Billetino being escorted in handcuffs, surrounded by police.

"In related news, known criminal Horace "Baby Dragon" Billetino appeared before a judge today, pleading guilty to charges ranging from racketeering, unlawful imprisonment, weapons trafficking, and grand larceny. There are also unconfirmed reports that investigators are looking to file charges stemming from the Cornet Labs explosion four years ago.

 _"Luckily, the security guard that survived the explosion was perfectly willing to turn himself into the Attorney's office. It was a simple matter of jostling his conscious._

 _The major families are going to be dealing with the power vacuum for months. You never see people get so ruthless and vindictive then when their divvying up the inheritance. Though I am concerned on who might emerge as the new leadership, something to keep my eye on."_

* * *

 **BALKHAM ASYLUM**

"STEP FORWARD INMATE!"

The re-enforced door slammed behind Horace Billetino, causing him to jump from the sound. Wearing an orange jumpsuit and beige slippers, he held his bed sheets in front of him. The little man was terrified, swallowing a lump of fear as he turned to face down the hall. Shaking like a Chihuahua in November, it took the nudging of the guard behind him to get his feet moving once more.

"Welcome to the big house little man!" Another inmate called out from his cell.

"They put some toddler clothes on you?"

"You gonna need a stepstool for the showers!"

Horace continued down the hall, keeping his face straight.

"In here." The guard said, pointing to a hallway breaking off to the left. "Single cells for inmates requiring 'special circumstances'."

The hall was quiet, no jeering denizens leering out from between bars, no noise. Just a row of cells along the right side.

"You're at the end."

His destination before him, Horace began the final march. But as he passed the first cell, he heard a voice that seemed very out of place.

"Valiant try darling, too bad it didn't work out."

Horace looked over to see Radiance in the cell, dressed in similar attire, giving him a coy smile as he walked.

"Ya got a lot of spunk kid." Mistress Mare-velous complimented from the next cell.

"What was Shadowbolt like? Was he scary?" Bound by a number of restraints, Fili-Second grinned like a jester before bouncing around her cell like a rubber ball and laughing.

"Lotta brains in a such a small package, coulda used the muscle to back it up." Saddle Ranger said, leaning against the bars.

As he passed Zapp, the woman looked at him like a cat would to a mouse. "And they call you the baby dragon huh? Well played."

Two cells remained, and he knew who must be in the next, who would be his new neighbor.

"Looks like I underestimated you kid." Masked Matter-Horn said, standing in the center of her cell door with a satisfied smirk. "You're not so **Humdrum** after all."

Horace entered his cell, feeling overwhelmed by the kudos of the Malice Mares. The cell door slammed shut as he stood transfixed by his new circumstances.

"Let me know if there's anything else we can get you."

He thought about it for a moment. "I want a cape."

* * *

"As for the mysterious Shadowbolt…" Mica's attention focused hard on the broadcast, the screen taken up by a picture of a figure under a white sheet carried on a gurney. Coroner's office personnel rushing it into the back of an ambulance.

"There is still no word on his condition, or current whereabouts."

* * *

 **CLASSIFIED MEDICAL FACILITY**

"Are we sure about what he remembers?"

"Can the experiment be duplicated?"

A number of men and women, scientists, occupied a darkened room. In front of them was a one-way mirror to a lighted cell.

Cables, tubes, and chains hung from the ceiling, in the center, Shadowbolt was restrained. His cell was a combination hospice and prison, nurturing him back to full health while making sure he could not escape. The chains were attached to a straightjacket, specially made of industrially durable elastic materials. A breathing mask covered his mouth, and a white band covered his eyes. He breathed in a steady rhythm, the mask providing air, the cables monitoring his vitals.

"I wonder if he remembers the time between his death and his resurrection." A single man among them, taller, older gentleman, with the image of the cell reflecting in his glasses. He wore a plain black suit, thin tie, and stood with his hands behind his back. "Just imagine what we could learn from him."

A door to the rear of the room opened, a new group of people entered. The first was a man in uniform, an Army Colonel, followed by a handful of soldiers. The Colonel came to stand beside the tall man, likewise peering into the room beyond.

"How soon until he can be moved?"

Inside the chamber, Shadowbolt's head jolted.

* * *

Mica used the remote to shut the television off, taking a deep breath as she listened to the fire. A passing winter wind rattled a window, but she didn't mind, closing her eyes and letting her head rest on the back of the couch.

 _"Shadowbolt disappeared hours after I left him to the paramedics, removed from all paper trails, taken off the grid._

 _In the end, it turns out Shadowbolt wasn't my enemy, and I wasn't his. Thomas Jacobs was a man lashing out in pain and anger, trying to right a wrong, and see the guilty punished. He was a symptom of what happens in the absence of justice, when revenge is the only recourse one has left. He is what I'm ultimately trying to prevent._

 _I'll find him someday. I saw the humanity that was still left in him, I believe that he can still do great things, as he once hoped to do."_

A cell phone on the table in front of her began to buzz once more, this time an alert that somewhere in Maretropolis, the wicked were not at rest. Mica downed the last of her coffee, and got off the couch. She approached the bookcase, using the tendrils of hair to pull on several books at once, triggering the secret doorway to open. She paused for a moment, struck by the dark precipice she was about to enter into as she stood in the firelight.

 _I know that he can find that balance, between the light of justice, and the_ _ **shadow of vengeance**_ _."_

* * *

 _Thanks for reading Mane-iac: Shadow of Vengeance! And of course a big thanks to Tarbtano for his oversight and blessing for this project to happen!_

 _If you want to see more Mane-iac let me know! There are ideas for sequels, but that depends on you guys._


End file.
